The State of the Japanese State: Contested Identity, Direction and Role 9781898823728

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THE STATE OF THE JAPANESE STATE CONTESTED IDENTITY, DIRECTION AND ROLE

RENAISSANCE BOOKS ASIA PACIFIC SERIES Managing Editor ROGER BUCKLEY VOLUME 4, ISSN 2396-8877

The titles published in this series are listed at www.renaissancebooks.co.uk/series

The State of the Japanese State CONTESTED IDENTITY, DIRECTION AND ROLE ™

By

Gavan McCormack Professor Emeritus, Australian National University

RENAISSANCE BOOKS ASIA PACIFIC SERIES, VOL.4, ISSN 2396-8877

THE STATE OF THE JAPANESE STATE CONTESTED IDENTITY, DIRECTION AND ROLE

First published 2018 by RENAISSANCE BOOKS P O Box 219 Folkestone Kent CT20 2WP Renaissance Books is an imprint of Global Books Ltd ISBN 978-1-898823-71-1 Hardback ISBN 978-1-898823-72-8 [eBook] © Gavan McCormack 2018 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Set in Garamond 11 on 12.0 pt by Dataworks Printed and bound in England by CPI Antony Rowe Ltd., Chippenham, Wilts

Contents ™

Preface

ix

Chapter 1 : The Improbable Package

1

The Improbable Package – Imperial, Pacifist, Democratic

2

Peace, Asia, and Article 9

6

San Francisco and “Normalization”

15

Abe 1: 1993–2007

25

Abe 2: 2012–2016

32

Abe 3: 2017–2018

40

Chapter 2 : The Client State

45

Poodle Powers

48

Servility

50

Challenging Clientelism, 2005–2010

54

Positive Pacifism

59

Japan the Beautiful

61

Chapter 3: The Client State’s Client State

66

Japan in the East [China] Sea

66

Inclusion/Exclusion, and Deceit

69

An “Okinawan Way”

78

“Kempakusho” and “All Okinawa”

81

The Enigmatic Governor

85

Court Proceedings

87

v

vi

THE STATE OF THE JAPANESE STATE





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Chapter 4: Okinawa – State Violence and Civic Resistance

101

Public Enemy Number One

106

Civil Suits

108

Security

110

Struggle without End

111

Table : Japan vs Okinawa, 1995–2018

117

Chapter 5: Around the East [China] Sea

120

China

120

North Korea

128





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Russia and the Putin Plan

145

South-Western Frontier Islands – Yonaguni, Miyako, and Ishigaki

149

Mage Island

155

Senkaku/Diaoyu

157

Communities

164

Chapter 6 : The Construction State

167

Resilience

167

Sustainability

173

CONTENTS

vii

The Nuclear State

177

The Ever Faster State

183

War and Gambling

186

Chapter 7 : The Constitutional State

190

Popular Sovereignty and Symbolic Emperor

191

Revision Agendas

193





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Chapter 8 : The Rampant State Ikkyo – “One Strong” Moritomo Gakuen Kake Gakuen Veterinary College Conspiracy Secrets Abe Triumphant, October 2017

209 209 210 213 217 221 227

Chapter 9 : Conclusion

231

Afterword

241

Index

249

Preface ™

As this book goes to press early in 2018, Abe Shinzo, in his 7th year (6th of his second term) as Prime Minister, enjoys a super (two-thirds) majority in the Diet and can contemplate political dominance likely to extend through the inauguration of a new imperial regime in April 2019, the Tokyo Olympic Games of 2020, and a revised constitution (most likely in 2021) before retiring, possibly in glory, some time in 2021. I find myself pondering how and why the Abe state is so successful, despite an ideological agenda for which it is difficult to detect mass support, and how it is able to project a generally positive image internationally while choosing to give unconditional support to the Donald Trump regime that is the butt of such general international opprobrium. From what roots did it grow? How secure is the democratic project? In contemplating the puzzle of the Japanese state, I set two markers, first going back seven decades to the “creation” – the arrangements imposed on the country by the post-war allied (mostly US) occupation, the constitution of 1946 and the San Francisco Treaty arrangements of 1951, out of which grew a peculiar dependence, maturing through subsequent decades into today’s fully-fledged “client state” relationship, and later focussing on the enthusiastic and unconditional Abe embrace for the crass, capricious, and xenophobic United States of Donald Trump. I use the term “Client State” (that I first adopted in 2007) alongside others such as “construction state” and “constitutional state” (though the latter in a primarily ironic sense), and discuss other aspects under the heading “rampant state,” but I am at a loss to find an encapsulating word to convey the Abe state’s combination of clientelism – its structured and chosen submissiveness towards the Unitd States – and assertiveness and historical revisionism, of the kind that in other countries would be seen as extremist, or ultra-nationalist. It is this peculiar blend of contradictory qualities that I wanted to try to capture. Prime Minister Abe is well-known for “Abe-nomics,” but my focus is “Abe-politics.” ix

x

THE STATE OF THE JAPANESE STATE

As this book circulated in draft form, one reader comment caught my eye. It was that I paid too much attention to Okinawa, which “unfortunately … is quite a small and remote part of Japan.” Readers of the book can judge the aptness of this comment for themselves but my short answer is that in the contest over identity and direction of the Japanese state nowhere is more “central” than Okinawa. Nowhere is the constitutional principle of popular sovereignty asserted with such fervor and yet so blatantly denied, nowhere else is subject to such pressure designed to deny or subdue the aspiration for peace and democracy and enforce submission to US military purposes. And it seems that, if the Okinawan people are defeated, a real prospect in 2018 (as discussed below), Japanese democracy as a whole would suffer a blow from which it would be hard to recover. So I persist. As I write, preparedness is underway for a possible resumption of the Korean War, in which Okinawa would immediately, against its people’s will, be centrally (and very likely devastatingly) involved. As the “client state” of a “client state,” it has no option but obedience. The Japanese state shows itself under a different aspect in Okinawa to what it shows in Tokyo or Osaka, of for that matter Washington or New York. Readers who may wish to follow up the Okinawa anaysis offered in this book may consult my essays posted over the past sixteen years at The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, or my co-authored (with Satoko Oka Norimatsu) Resistant Islands – Okinawa versus Japan and the United States [Rowman and Littlefield, 2012, 2018, and in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese editions in 2014 and 2015]. I should also express my gratitude to my colleague and friend at MIT in Boston, John W. Dower, with whom I had the pleasure of discussing some of this book’s themes for Japan’s NHK Television in 2012, as published in 2014 by NHK Bukkusu [Tenkanki no Nihon e – Pakkusu Amerikana ka pakkusu Asia ka, (For the Japan in Transition – Towards Pax Americana or Pax Asia)]. Readers may be surprised at how dark are the hues in which, by and large, I paint my picture. I find myself wishing I could be more roseate, but the fact is that in my 56 years of engagement with Japan I have never felt such foreboding over the country’s present and future course. A return to regional or even general war involving Japan has till now always seemed to me unimaginable but as of 2018 that is no longer so. Gavan McCormack, Canberra, April 2018

Chapter One

The Improbable Package ™

Japan is internationally known as a safe, stable, friendly, and comfortable society, in a prosperous and democratic state. Yet this book argues that that benign and stable surface covers deep-seated contradictions. Under the Abe Shinzo government (2006–2007, 2012-), military expansion is a top government priority, the erratic Trump administration in the United States has no more faithful and uncritical follower, major bills are forcefully pushed through the Diet taking advantage of the government’s majority and evading or cutting debate, hate speech proliferates, civic protest is, on occasion, savagely suppressed,1 the door is shut in the face of refugees, Muslims are subjected to the sort of surveillance that even in the US is forbidden,2 and so on. In this second decade of the 21st century, both Japan and the United States find themselves under governments committed to significant institutional change. Both aspire to “greatness,” the one to attain it and the other to regain it. The Abe government of Abe Shinzo was elected in 2012 on a mandate to “shed the post-war” and “take back the country” and the Donald Trump government in Washington was elected in November 2016 promising “to make America great again” and to restore “America first.” Abe’s Japanese government rested on the improbable combination of commitments: to “shrug off the husk of the post-war state” and “recover Japan’s independence,” even while taking steps to integrate Japan’s military forces under US command and freed for global service in the US cause, and to adopt trade, finance, and industrial policies to meet US demands and pressures (despite 1 2

See especially the discussion (at chapter four) of the case of Yamashiro Hiroji. Jarai Blakkarly, “Shadow of surveillance looms over Japan’s Muslims,” Japan Times, 13 July 2016. 1

2

THE STATE OF THE JAPANESE STATE

the fact of the Trump administration ultimately rejecting the TPP or Trans-Pacific Partnership project). In October 2017, by a large majority, Abe and his government was returned to office once again in national elections with a “super-majority” (in excess of two-thirds) in the National Diet. Much as it seemed in the early days of the Trump administration that Abe had accomplished a remarkable personal rapport with him, it remained to be seen how Abe’s “beautiful Japan” would fit within Trump’s “America First.” THE IMPROBABLE PACKAGE – IMPERIAL, PACIFIST, DEMOCRATIC

In exploring the nature of the early 21st century Japanese state, I return to some of the central propositions I have developed in the past, including that of Japan as “client state,” “construction state,” “colonial state” (in relation to Okinawa), constitutional democracy and constitutional pacifist state. I also tentatively introduce other no doubt controversial categories: Japan as “law-less state,” and as “rampant state” and, even though I refer to it only briefly, of Japan as “geriatric state.” The Abe government describes itself as committed to the universal values of democracy, human rights, rule of law. It lets fly policy “arrows” to revive and energize Japan’s “hundred million people” and have Japanese women “shine.” It celebrates Japan the beautiful. It preaches the gospel of what it calls “resilience,” and declares to the world a commitment to “positive pacifism.” But the argument of this book is that such messages are driven more by the exigencies of public relations than by real policy commitment, and that the Japanese state of today rests on a post-war settlement, now more than sixty years old, that framed and adjusted, but did not resolve, multiple contradictions. Popular sovereignty, division of powers, fundamental human rights and democratic principles, a “symbolic” emperor system, and a deep-seated state Japanese subordination towards the United States were scarcely compatible elements, cobbled together in ways that reflected the balance of power of that time. The United States then bestraddled the world, a colossus beyond challenge, and Japan’s submission, following crushing military defeat and six years of occupation, was near complete. The six and a half subsequent decades have seen an immeasurable shift in the economic relationship, even as, politically, the dominant/subordinate relationship has been repeatedly confirmed.

THE IMPROBABLE PACKAGE

3

Even at the moment in 1946 when it adopted its pacifist and democratic constitution, Japan was subject to US military occupation and integrated within the global US hegemonic project. That crucial superior-subordinate relationship, unmentioned in 1946, was spelled out in the San Francisco treaty settlement of 1951. Both documents, constitution and treaty, together define Japan’s “state” and the location of “sovereignty.” Only by adopting a dual focus attention to them is it possible to understand how the constitutional peace state proclaimed in 1946 morphed into the contemporary state whose raison d’être is service to the most militaristic, war-prone, violent and and lawless country in modern history. Submission to Washington inevitably feeds hostility of varying degrees to Japan’s closest neighbors, Russia, China and North Korea (and a notable lack of warmth towards South Korea), and support for nuclear weapons (and opposition to the global anti-nuclear weapons movement and the UN Treaty of 2017) despite being the world’s premier nuclear victim country. It also helps to explain why the 21st century government of Japan should attach the highest priority to the onslaught on one of the world’s most bio-diverse and precious marine environments in order to construct a mega-military complex for the US Marine Corps. And it helps to explain the current moves in Japan to militarize the Southwest (Frontier) Islands of the East China Sea. The advent of the Trump government in the United States raised large questions for Japan. While Japan has struggled mightily to please the new Washington regime, its contribution to the grand causes of humanity – combating global warming and species depletion, eliminating nuclear weapons, de-carbonizing and de-nuclearizing the world, building peace and outlawing war, constructing a socio-economic order that is sustainable and renewable – has been minuscule. In what follows I essay to identify the main stages in the evolution of the Japanese state of today: its genesis in the post-war arrangements from constitution (adopted in 1946) to San Francisco Peace Treaty (adopted in 1951 and in effect from April 1952), the consolidation of the conservative, anti-communist, GDP-expanding Japanese state (roughly 1955 to 1990) and its evolution into what I call a “client state,” down to the re-organizations that have been underway since the end of the Cold War in 1990, and which continue from 2017 in the era of president Trump. This is not intended to be a comprehensive history. Its focus is on the way in which the contradictions of the state structured by constitution and treaty sixty-plus years ago are manifest

4

THE STATE OF THE JAPANESE STATE

today. I include here a detailed account of the evolution of the “Okinawa struggle” in which the Japanese state is uniquely discernible from the Okinawan perspective and because it offers perhaps the strongest challenge to the sixty year old package. The principle authors of the peculiar relationship between the two great cross-Pacific powers were on the Japanese side Hirohito, the Showa emperor (till 1945 commander-in-chief of the Imperial Japanese Forces), and on the US side Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers that ruled Japan from 1945 to 1951, and John Foster Dulles, President Truman’s special envoy to negotiate the post-war relationship. After surrendering to the allied command in August 1945, Hirohito less than two years later was installed under the new constitution as “symbolic” emperor and major support of the US occupation. Unique among the surrendering or defeated Axis power leaders, Hirohito underwent the transition from war criminal suspect to architect and core figure of the post-war system. For many it had been taken for granted that the Japanese surrender would be accompanied by Hirohito’s trial and punishment as wartime leader. A US Gallup poll in June 1945 found 70 per cent opinion in favor of capital punishment or exile.3 A similar sentiment prevailed throughout the Asia-Pacific war zone, including Australia where Hirohito ranked at No 7 on the list of those recommended for war crimes trial.4 Hirohito himself was undoubtedly well aware of the threat, both personal and institutional. Yet he (and his closest associates) managed to steer a course that led not only to survival but to the performance of a central role in the new state. The formula that underpinned the occupation and post-occupation arrangements was accomplished relatively quickly. The guns had only been silent for six weeks and the country lay in ruins when on 27 September 1945 Occupation Commander General MacArthur had his first meeting 3

4

Charles E. Neu, The Troubled Encounter: The US and Japan, New York, 1975, p. 201, Toyoshita Narahiko, Showa tenno no sengo Nihon, Tokyo, Iwanami, 2015, p. 43. Damon W. Gunn message to Joseph B. Keenan (International Prosecution Section, GHQ, SCAP, Top Secret 25 January 1946, US national Archives, GHQ, SCAP, M168 Reel 1). Only under strong American pressure did Australia agree in April that year to delete him. See (unpublished) Memorandum by D.C.S. Sissons, “IMTFE- Indictments proposed by Australia, the genesis of the Australian list,” 29 April 1992.

THE IMPROBABLE PACKAGE

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with Hirohito.5 These unlikely protagonists established a rapport that rested on the conviction on both sides that each could turn the relationship to his own benefit. They met on eleven occasions before MacArthur’s eventual sacking and return to the US in April 1951, and it is safe to say that no other relationship had such an impact on the shape of the post-war Japanese state. The US had decided very early in the war that it could retain and make use of the emperor, The Washington search for strategy for the eventual defeat and conquest of Japan led to adoption of the “Japan Plan,” drawn up by the Psychological Warfare Branch of the US War Department headed by Colonel O.N. Solbert in June 1942 and evidently endorsed at the highest levels of government. It resolved “to use the emperor (with caution and not by name) as a peace symbol.”6 The emperor system could serve as a linchpin of a conservative order and the emperor himself as the servant of US purpose.7 Months after adoption of the Solbert design, Edwin Reischauer, then a young Harvard lecturer and later to become ambassador to Japan under John F. Kennedy and doyen of Japan scholars in the US, delivered a memo for the State Department calling for the conversion of Japan into the US’s Manchukuo, with Hirohito assigned the role of “puppet,”8 who “not only could be won over to our side but who would carry with him a tremendous weight of authority,” serving the United States as Pu Yi, the Japanese puppet emperor of the state of Manchukuo, served imperial Japan between 1932 and 1945.9 5 6

7

8

9

Toyoshita, Showa tenno, p. 63. Ultimately, such strain of thinking led to the adoption of the constitutional role for the emperor as “symbol” in 1946. (“Digest of the Japan Plan (Final Draft),” drawn up by Colonel Oscar N. Solbert, War Department, Military Intelligence Service, Psychological Warfare Branch, 3 June 1942, http://netizen.html.xdomain. jp/JapanPlan.html/) Kato Tetsuro, “1942 nen rokugatsu Beikoku ‘Nihon puran’ to shocho tennosei,” Sekai, December 2004, pp. 132–143. Fujitani Tadashi, “Shin shiryo hakken -- Raishawa moto Beikoku taishi no kairai tennosei koso,” Sekai, March 2000, (English version in “The Reischauer Memo: Mr. Moto, Hirohito, and Japanese American Soldiers,” Critical Asian Studies, volume 33, 3, 2001). See also Tadashi Fujitani, Race for Empire: Koreans as Japanese and +BQBOFTF
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6

THE STATE OF THE JAPANESE STATE

PEACE, ASIA, AND ARTICLE 9

The American insistence on retention of the emperor was only acceptable, in Asia and on the part of US allies including Australia, when combined with the provision that Japan be permanently disarmed. The constitution’s Articles 1–8, in other words, were acceptable because of the assurance of the two paragraphs of Article 9. 1. Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes. 2. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency will not be recognized. Despite later right-wing complaint that the constitution, and especially Article 9, was a foreign imposition, it is clear that both sides were in agreement and that the “pacifist” clause was Japanese in origin. The emperor clauses, on the other hand, rarely if ever criticized as “imposition,” were the subject of a specific MacArthur directive. His first demand when the constitution was being drafted was that retention of the emperor system be its central, non-negotiable principle. “Emperor is at the head of the state,” began his directive of 3 February 1946 to the constitution drafters. In other words, the US national interest would best be served by retaining, rather than investigating or punishing him.10 The ink had scarcely dried on the 1946 constitution, incorporating the three principles of popular sovereignty, pacifism, and human rights, before the United States regretted it. It especially regretted Article 9, the pacifist clause, which Vice-President Richard Nixon in 1953 referred to as a US “mistake.”11 In Japan, the Liberal Demo10

11

Paragraph 1 of the Secret memo of 3 February 1946 headed “Copy of pencilled Notes of C-in-C handed to me on Sunday 3 February 1946 to be basis of draft constitution,” now held in the library of University of Maryland, College Park, Md, begins “Emperor is at the head of the state…” Watanabe Osamu, Kempo wa do ikite kita ka (Tokyo: Iwanami bukkuretto No 85, 1987): 15.

THE IMPROBABLE PACKAGE

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cratic Party (LDP) from its inception in 1955 included in its party platform a pledge to “revise” it. However, despite persistent US pressure on Japan to cast off its constitutional “pacifist” shackles and play the fully-fledged military role of an ally, and LDP aspiration for revision, the requirement of a two-thirds majority in both Houses of the Diet proved an impossible hurdle and the 1955 pledge remains unfulfilled. From its foundation in 1955 and throughout the Cold War, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was committed to revise or delete the problematic article. Despite the obligation under Article 99 to “respect” the constitution, many public figures made fundamental revision their major political goal. Till 2016, however, opposition forces maintained at least one-third of the numbers in the Diet, enough to block any attempted revision. So with revision of the words (meibun kaishaku) politically impossible, prime ministers and governments instead drained them of content by progressively “revising their interpretation” (kaishaku kaiken). Not until 2016 was there a government with the magic numbers to contemplate revision of the actual words. For Hirohito, the priority was to ensure his own absolution, the continuance of the imperial institution, and the centrality of his political and ideological thinking to the new state.12 He was more than willing to cooperate with Washington’s post-war designs. He brushed aside his own war record by presenting himself as a beleaguered proponent of peace who had tried without success to restrain the forces of militarism, thereby helping shift war responsibility onto former premier Tojo Hideki and other military and civilian officials (who were in due course hanged in December 1948).13 Only once in his long post-war life (till his death in 1989) did anyone have the temerity to ask Hirohito directly how he saw his own responsibility for the launch and conduct of the war. Confronting that question from an intrepid Japanese journalist at a December 1975 press conference on the eve of his departure to visit the US, Hirohito’s response was a classic of obfuscation: 14 12 13 14

Toyoshita, Showa tenno, passim. Toyoshita, Showa tenno, p. 66. The journalist was Koji Nakamura, sometime Japan correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review. On the question and its context: Norihiro Kato, “The journalist and the emperor,” New York Times, 14 October 2014.

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“Since I have not done much research on matters pertaining to literature I do not understand very well such figures of speech and so am unable to respond to questions of that sort.” 15

The basic details of the unlikely deal between the conquering general and the surrendering emperor were spelled out, perhaps for the first time, by then Japanese Prime Minister Shidehara Kijuro [1872–1951, Prime Minister for six months from October 1945] at a three-hour long meeting with General MacArthur on 24 January 1946, five months after the surrender. MacArthur spoke of his concern over the demand rising “in some circles in America and in related countries” for abolition of the imperial institution or arraignment of Hirohito as war criminal. He then went on to say that “if you [Shidehara] declare to the world your ideal of renunciation of war, and if Japan can regain the confidence of foreign countries by showing the resolve never to go to war again, then the inclusion of the emperor system in the new constitution can probably be acceptable to the great powers without too much fuss.” 16

Thus the unlikely outcome: the emperor, Hirohito, in whose name till August 1945 the Imperial Japanese forces had laid waste much of Asia and fought no-holds-barred battles against US and other forces throughout the Pacific was reinstated within months of surrender as the Occupation’s chosen leader, albeit as “symbol.” Little wonder that in October 1946 on the occasion of his third meeting with MacArthur, Hirohito “thanked” him for the constitution.17 At the onset of war in December 1941 Hirohito had featured at the head of the Japanese Communist Party’s list of war crime suspects, so from the time in late 1945 when the wartime ban on the Japanese Communist Party was rescinded, its leaders released from prison declaring the goal of a “People’s Republic of Japan,” and the Kempeitai’s 5,000-strong military police force disbanded, he had good reason to be afraid. Becoming symbolic emperor was surely much to be preferred to facing a war crimes trial. 15

16

17

http://www.47news.jp/47topics/post-war70/where/post_20160216115936.html/ (Thanks to Norma Field for suggesting this English rendering.) Toyoshita, Showa Tenno, pp. 14–15 [reproducing Koseki Shoichi, Nihonkoku kempo no tanjo, p. 127–128.] Toyoshita, Showa tenno, p. 23.

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Once the imperial role as “symbol” was clear (and although in truth it was never really clear), the constitution’s first eight clauses, defining his role as “symbol” of the unity of the state and people had to be matched by its ninth, the peace clause, the necessary reassurance for Japan’s neighbors against any resurgence of emperor-centered militarism. Resented by many Japanese rightists as a “foreign imposition,” it is now clear that the key initiative for inclusion of that peace clause was that of then Prime Minister Shidehara.18 In April 1946, the Australian call for the emperor to be indicted was quietly set aside and the objections raised by it and other countries that had suffered from Japanese aggression were overruled. 19 The question of war responsibility was thus fudged and judicial procedures compromised so as to protect the wartime commander-in-chief. For Japan’s elites the bitterness of national subservience was sweetened by their being allowed to retain the myths of emperor-centered uniqueness and superiority.20 For several decades the content of the discussions between Hirohito and Occupation head Douglas MacArthur on the occasions of their meetings over the roughly six-year period between MacArthur’s arrival in Tokyo and his departure on being sacked by President Truman in 1951 was carefully guarded. Gradually, however, materials have come to light that shed some striking, even shocking, light on the emperor and his thoughts and actions. In 1979, a paper was discovered in the US archives that showed him to have greatly impressed MacArthur at least in part because of his view that the “Japanese people as a whole were lacking in education,” were “marked by “a willingness to be led,” were “easy to sway from one extreme to the other,” and inclined towards “selfishly concentrating their attention on their rights and not thinking about their duties and obligations,” which led the emperor to think that “the Occupation should last for a long time.”21 While 18

19 20

21

Asahi TV, “Hodo station,” February and July 2016, and “9-jo wa Shidehara shusho ga teian,” Tokyo Shimbun, 12 July 2016. Toyoshita, Showa tenno, p. 55. “Political considerations” (i.e. American and British UK pressure) prevailed, however, and in April 1946 Australia, the only country to have formally included the emperor’s name on its list, fell into line. Hirohito’s name was deleted. (DCS Sissons, “Australia and the IMTFE,” unpublished memo possession of author, 9 April 1992.) Quoting from a “Top Secret” document communicating the emperor’s thoughts to the Occupation authorities (General MacArthur), dating most likely from between April and July 1946, discussed by John Dower in “Tennosei minshushugi no tanjo,”

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dismissive of the Japanese people, Hirohito told MacArthur that he believed Japan’s security depended on “initiatives taken by the United States, representing the Anglo-Saxons.”22 Months later, in September he urged that the United States should maintain its military occupation of Okinawa for “25 to 50 years or longer, under the fiction of a long-term lease.”23 In short, there was no more enthusiastic supporter of the US cause, and it was precisely for his compliance that Hirohito was assigned (and himself welcomed) the role of chief instrument of US policy. Nothing could have been further from the truth than the statement in Article 1 of the constitution about the emperor “deriving his position from the will of the Japanese people.” Hirohito paid particular attention to the disposition of the southern island chain known variously as Okinawa or Ryukyu. It may even be said that he exercised a greater influence over its modern (wartime and post-war) history than any other individual. In February 1945 as defeat loomed, Prince Konoe Fumimaro (imperial adviser and former prime minister) pressed him to accept the hopelessness of the Japanese military position and end hostilities in order to preserve the “national polity,” i.e. the emperor system. Hirohito responded that it would not be possible to do that unless “some success in battle has first been accomplished.” His words were tantamount to an imperial command. Okinawa was assigned the role of sacrificial stones, holding off the allied assault on mainland Japan and helping preserve the “national polity.” The Battle of Okinawa that followed from late March left one in four Okinawans dead and the prefecture devastated. In July the emperor instructed Prince Konoe to prepare to undertake a special mission to Moscow to sue for peace. Events overtook it and the mission never took place, but Konoe’s briefing was that he should be prepared to abandon

22

23

Sekai, September 1999, pp. 221–232; in English as “A message from the Showa Emperor,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, Vol. 31, No. 4, 1999, pp. 19–24. The emperor’s view as stated on 3 May 1947, three days after the new constitution came into force, Toyoshita Narahiko, Ampo joyaku no seiritsu - Yoshida gaiko to tenno gaiko (Tokyo: Iwanami shinsho, 1996), p. 144 (and see Toyoshita, Showa tenno, pp. 93–4.) Emperor’s message, September 1947, Toyoshita, Ampo joyaku, p. 222, and later Showa tenno, pp. 102–3. (For the English text of the emperor’s message: W. J. Sebald, “Emperor of Japan’s opinion concerning the future of the Ryukyu Islands,” Memorandum for General MacArthur, 20 September 1947, Okinawa Prefectural Archives, Naha.)

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Okinawa (along with Ogasawara and Sakhalin) while striving to preserve the main islands. Okinawa was simply a bargain counter.24 In his 1947 intervention suggesting that the US retain Okinawa as a military asset, Hirohito added that that would surely be to serve American interests.25 The US Political Adviser for Japan, William J. Sebald, who transmitted the message, commented, perhaps closer to the truth, that “the emperor’s suggestion is largely based on self-interest.”26 The brutal truth is that the emperor played a key role in dividing Japan and in effect permanently gifting Okinawa to the Pentagon at this crucial juncture. One vein of thinking has attempted to turn around the emperor’s role and argue that his wisdom brought a diplomatic triumph for Japan by securing US recognition of Japan’s “residual sovereignty” over Okinawa, but that view rests on a mis-translation into Japanese of the word “selfinterest” on Hirohito’s part to mean “national interest.” As Japanese historian Shindo Eiichi insists, the distinction is fundamental.27 Driven for concern for his own security, even for his life, the emperor took upon himself the role of representative plenipotentiary of the Japanese state, offering Okinawa to the US despite having just been stripped of all powers and supposedly transformed into pure symbol. Before his suggestion, nobody had suggested turning Okinawa into a permanent US military encampment.28 After it, Japanese construction companies (Obayashigumi, Hazamagumi) set to work building the base structure for which Okinawa is known today. That in acting as he did he was also in breach of the just-adopted constitution only underlines Hirohito’s responsibility. The Hirohito view of Okinawa during and after the war, as a peripheral island group of no intrinsic worth, to be used as a card to play to advance the interests of the US and mainland Japan, was widely shared. Then in February 1948 Hirohito stressed the 24

25 26 27

28

The Potsdam Declaration of 26 July1945 struck the same note: Japanese sovereignty was to be “limited to the islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku and such minor islands as we determine.” Okinawans remember the role of the Showa emperor in such events. See, for example “Showa tenno jitsuroku, futatsu no sekinin o meiki subeki da,” editorial, Ryukyu Shimpo, 10 September 2014. Toyoshita, Showa tenno, p. 113. Sebald, op. cit. Shindo Eiichi, “Higashi Ajia kyodotai no naka de Ryukyu Okinawa o kangaeru,” in Hatoyama Yukio, Shindo Eiichi, Inamine Susumu, Magosaki Ukeru, and Takano Hajime, Higashi Ajia kyodotai to Okinawa no mirai, Kadensha, 2014, pp. 19ff Shindo, “Higashi Ajia kyodotai,” p. 23.

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communist “threat to Japan” necessitating the drawing of an anticommunist defense line through Japan, Ryukyu (Okinawa), Taiwan and the Philippines, based on a long-term US military presence in Japan and in Ryukyu.29 Severed from Japan for 27 years at Hirohito’s suggestion, Okinawa (Ryukyu) remains to this day a special Japanese region in which US military purpose is the paramount consideration, while the anti-communist military line Hirohito suggested, confronting and containing the Communist realm, became and remains the major focus of the US “hub and spokes” alliance system that was constructed under the San Francisco Treaty from 1951. Under the newly adopted constitution, Hirohito had no constitutional right to an independent political role. Since constitutional sovereignty resided in the people, and he was simply symbolic, these “advices” were as unconstitutional as they were substantial. Together with its decision to retain the emperor and utilize him to US ends, in a further bizarre twist the US government also decided to maintain the myths of Japanese uniqueness and superiority that had been at the heart of Japanese militarism and imperialism. In what may be seen as one of the great propaganda coups of the century, the US War Department codified and refined the myths of Japanese uniqueness and circulated them world-wide as the classic text by Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, which became functional to the end of achieving Japan’s structural subordination to US aims.30 Historically privileged definitions of Japaneseness formulated in the 17th and 18th century Mito school and consolidated in the Meiji-Showa state emerged again, with Japan as unique, superior, pure, imperial, non-Asian. When Prime Minister Mori Yoshiro in 2000 declared Japan to be an “emperor-centered country of the gods,” he was uttering a classic formulation. As discussed further below, precisely this Shinto formulation of unique and superior Japanese identity became the core ideological consciousness of early 21st century Japanese governments, including Abe Shinzo’s. 29

30

On the second (1948) emperor message: Toyoshita, Showa tenno, p. 120. And see discussion in Shindo Eiichi “Tenno messeji hatsugensha Shindo Eiichi shi ni kiku,” Ryukyu shimpo, 28 April 2017. See Sonia Ryang, “Chrysanthemum’s Strange Life: Ruth Benedict in Post-war Japan,” Asian Anthropology, Vol. 1, 2002, and Japan and National Anthropology: A Critique, London, RoutledgeCurzon/Asian Studies Association of Australia East Asia Series, 2004.

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Thus the frame of Japan as ineffable and unique giri and ninjobased culture served as instrument of policy in the 1940s and 1950s. 31 While the emperor’s divinity was renounced, this core pre-war kokutai (national polity) notion was retained, to be transformed over time by conservative Japanese and American intellectuals into Nihonjin-ron (Japan’s uniqueness) theory, thence to reverberate East and West. The idea of Japan as non-Asian, exotic and ineffable that was central to pre-war thinking was thus incorporated within US policy. In one influential formulation, Samuel Huntington saw Japan as the world’s sole nation-state/civilization, unique and separate from East Asia. The same separateness that in the 1930s was the intellectual and philosophical barrier to the construction of any East Asian or Greater East Asian community continued to function and became the leitmotif of both Western scholarship and much of Japanese self-perception. So long as enough people in Japan imagine they possess a unique and superior identity, and therefore Japan possesses no universal value, it could never threaten the US by creation of an alternative pole in the global system. The US-designed emperor-centered state, freed from any obligation to seriously address its past, was bound to remain isolated in Asia and tied dependently to the United States. Emperor-centeredness was reinforced by the law adopted in 1979 specifying that the calendar must use imperial reign years. (Thus 2018 becomes officially Heisei 30 or the 30th year of the Heisei era, Emperor Akihito’s era having been officially designated “Heisei” on its commencement in 1989). In other ways too, time is tied to an imperial axis, so that holidays are made to commemorate imperial events. Thus National Foundation Day which in the pre-war era celebrated the mythical origins of the country and was known as Kigensetsu, abolished in 1948 for its role in militarist and emperor-worshipping Japan’s past, was revised under slightly modified name (Kenkoku kinen no hi, Nation Founding Day) from 1966. Green Day (29 April) celebrates the nature love of the Showa emperor (Hirohito, 1926–1989) and the project to celebrate the birthday of the Meiji emperor, 3 November, as Meiji day is proceeding, with a target date of 2018, his 150th anniversary. Akihito’s 23 December birthday is already celebrated as “Emperor’s birthday,” and that date will change to 23 February when, in due course, his son, Akihito, succeeds him. 31

Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture, 1946.

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Throughout the 70-year history of the Japanese constitution, the contest between civic and tennoist conceptions of Japanese identity, fudged in 1946 for reason of the then utterly unequal relationship between occupier and occupied, has remained unresolved. Yet the insistence on the part of neo-nationalists on the organic wholeness and purity of Japanese culture, a belief now shared by more than half the members of the Japanese parliament, cannot alter the fact that it was a careful and deliberate imposition on Japan.32 While resentment focusses on the supposed “imposition” of Article 9, the Shidehara clause, the US imposition of emperor and Shinto generally passes without note. Cornell University's Naoki Sakai, however, offers a sharp, concise formulation: “the post-war emperor system is an American institution created by the United States for the promotion of the policies administered by the American occupation authority.”33 In the struggle over direction that gradually overtook US occupation policy, commonly referred to as the “reverse course,” Hirohito played a key and very active role, pressing hard and consistently, mostly in secret, to secure the long-term US military presence in mainland Japan as well as Okinawa, and to oppose the vaguely idealist motives that led Occupation head, General MacArthur, to think of Japan’s future as a “Switzerland of the Far East,” an unarmed, neutral state protected by international guarantees under the United Nations, with no need for US military presence in mainland Japan and only a temporary presence in Okinawa.34 To Hirohito’s great concern, or even anger, Yoshida Shigeru (Prime Minister, 1946–1947 and 1948–1954) at first favored such principles. As negotiations got underway on the terms of the peace treaty (eventually adopted at San Francisco in 1951) Yoshida saw no need to pass Okinawa to the US or to host any long-term US military base presence.35 Hirohito went to great lengths to persuade him and the government of which he was the supposed symbol, fostering a “right-wing” agenda of long-term US military presence (to be “spon32

33

34 35

Douglas Lummis, Uchi naru gaikoku – kiku to katana no saiko, Jiji tsushinsha, 1980, p. 93. Harry Harootunian and Naoki Sakai, “Dialogue – Japan studies and cultural studies,” positions, Vol. 7, No. 2, fall 1999, pp. 593–647, at p. 604. (See also Sakai’s Shisan sareru Nihongo, Nihonjin, Shinyosha, 1996.) Ibid, pp. 136–137 and for the Swiss analogy, Reader’s Digest, May 1950. For an unequivocal statement to that effect, to the Diet’s Foreign Affairs Committee on 29 July 1950, Toyoshita, Showa tenno, p. 156.

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taneously” requested by Japan). When the emperor referred to “recent mistaken views on the base question,”36 there was little doubt as to whom he was referring. The interest of the emperor and the US government converged with the incorporation of the “symbolic” emperor system at the heart of the new state design. Though well satisfied with his own role as symbol, Hirohito soon brushed aside the constraints implied by such a term and began to play a very active role in molding the institutions of the new Japan. His first act under the new constitution was to breach it by his secret message (noted above) to General MacArthur. The emperor system henceforth depended on the support of the US military. Anti-communism became their fundamental shared value. In July 1953, hostilities in Korea came to an end, albeit by ceasefire rather than peace treaty. The idea gained some traction in Tokyo that it might be time for a “positive diplomacy,” closure of the US bases and normalizing of relations with the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. In August 1955, three days before Foreign Minister Shigemitsu was to set off to Washington with the possibility of re-negotiating key sections of the San Francisco US-Japan relationship and converting the San Francisco Treaty arrangement into a bilateral, equal, treaty, with Japanese military forces gradually expanded and US forces gradually withdrawn, the emperor summoned him to his Nasu residence and (according to Shigemitsu’s much later – 1988 – account) insisted on the need to retain the US bases and strong, anti-communist, US-Japan military cooperation. In particular, the withdrawal of US based forces was “out of the question” (chutongun no tettai wa fuka nari). When in due course he met with Dulles in Washington, it seems that Shigemitsu made no mention of US withdrawal.37 SAN FRANCISCO AND “NORMALIZATION”

The second crucial step in settling Japan’s post-war order was the adoption in 1951 of the San Francisco treaty. Arriving in Japan early in 1951 to hammer out the details of a peace treaty, John Foster Dulles, did not mince his words: 36 37

Emperor’s letter to Dulles, August 1950, Toyoshita, Ampo joyaku, p. 164. Toyoshita, and sources cited there, Showa Tenno, pp. 201–211.

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“Do we get the right to station as many troops in Japan as we want where we want and for as long as we want? That is the principle question.”38

The point had been made six months earlier, in exactly the same terms, following high level policy discussions in Washington between the Departments of State and Defense.39 It was without question the US “bottom line.” To the extent that he could influence the outcome, Hirohito was positively in favor of a Japanese “yes” response. Despite the initial opposition of Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru who declared that he had “absolutely no intention of providing military bases for the sake of a separate peace,”40 Dulles in due course got what he wanted. Under the bilateral Security Treaty, signed on the afternoon of the same day as the multilateral Peace Treaty,41 8 September 1951, Japan granted to the US the right to station land, sea, and air forces in and about Japan and to use them to contribute to the maintenance of international peace and security in the Far East and to the security of Japan against armed attack from without, including assistance given at the express request of the Japanese Government to put down large-scale internal riots and disturbances in Japan.”42

The treaty therefore divided Japan into a demilitarized and dependent, peace constitution mainland and a heavily militarized and war-oriented American domain, Okinawa (then Ryukyu). Ryukyu became a UN-authorized trusteeship with the US as sole administering authority.43 On 8 September 1951, the San Francisco Treaty, or strictly speaking set of treaties, was signed, restoring sovereignty to Japan and end38

39

40

41

42

43

Minutes, Dulles Mission Staff Meeting, 26 January 1951, Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1951, vol. 6, pp. 811–815, at p. 812. On 3 August 1950, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950, vol. V1, p. 1265. (Toyoshita, Showa Tenno, p. 145). See, for example, his July 1950 speech. Toyoshita, Ampo joyaku, p. 130; Showa tenno, pp. 156–9 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Nihon gaiko bunsho, Sanfuranchisuko heiwa joyaku, choin, hakko,” http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/annai/honsho/shiryo/bunsho/h20. html/ Article 1 of the 1951 US-Japan Security Treaty, “https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Security_Treaty_Between_the_United_States_and_Japan/ Article 3, Treaty of Peace with Japan, Signed at San Francisco, 8 September 1951. See Kimie Hara, “The San Francisco Peace Treaty and frontier problems in the

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ing its occupation by US and allied military forces. 44 Coming into effect on 28 April 1952, it was, however, a partial and heavily conditional peace. The sovereignty regained was simultaneously negated, both by the division of the country (exercising Okinawa under direct US administration) and by the continuing occupation of the bases elsewhere in Japan. Those “occupation” forces became henceforth “occupying” forces. Nearly 70 years later, they are still there. At the time, the United States held an unquestionable military might. It was also the repository of world-wide fear and loathing for fascism and militarism and hope for future, democratic peace. The US was therefore able to dictate the terms of the world order, including not only the global security system that came to include the San Francisco Treaty but also the United Nations, World Bank, and IMF. It was possible to impose the San Francisco settlement in the absence from the negotiating table of Japan’s main neighbors and the major victims of its wars, including both China and Korea (both by that time divided and in the throes of war that had drawn in the United Nations itself as a belligerent) and the regional countries that remained at that time European colonies (in due course to become Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines). The Soviet Union, though in attendance, refused to sign the ensuing treaty. The overall effect was to turn the Japanese state away from the Asia it had devastated so that it faced exclusively to the east, across the Pacific, while reinforcing the orientation of Okinawa towards Asia and its role as base for successive US wars. Okinawa was destined to remain under direct American rule as “Ryukyu” for another 21 years. Such were the conditions embedded within the San Francisco treaty that it has to be seen as an “unequal treaty” and the ensuing Japanese state as truncated. Nothing is more astonishing about the process of construction of this post-defeat, emperor-centered, US sponsored and imposed order than the central role played, through the processes of surrender, occupation, and recovery, by Hirohito himself. His 1947 “Message”

44

regional order in East Asia: A sixty year perspective,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 2012, http://japanfocus.org/-Kimie-HARA/3739/ The multilateral peace treaty and the bilateral security treaty signed in San Francisco on 8 September 1951, complemented six months later by a bilateral “Administrative Agreement,” made up the “San Francisco Treaty System” that came into operation on 28 April 1952. See Kimie Hara, ed., The San Francisco System and Its Legacies: Continuation, Transformation, and Historical Reconciliation in the Asia-Pacific, New York and London, Routledge, 2014.

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was implemented, Okinawa delivered on a plate to the US military and “Anglo-Saxon” power entrenched, and his 1948 insistence on an “America-defended Far Eastern Perimeter Line” was implemented 45 Should it ever be necessary to deploy force to put down any “internal riots and disturbances” that might threaten his own position, the emperor was assured of US military support. Thus was born a new version of Kokutai, one which Toyoshita dubs “Ampo Kokutai” (Security Treaty version of National Polity). Hirohito attached especial weight to insisting that the continuing US base presence in Japan be seen not as “imposition” but as a US favor in response to Japanese request.46 The heart of the militaristic, Japanese old regime, the emperor, continued to beat in the body of the new, US-sponsored Japan. Historians have come to think of the US long-term Asian control design resting on the insertion into the San Francisco Treaty settlement terms of territorial “wedges” of dispute between Japan and its neighbor countries (the “Northern Territories,” Tok’do/Takeshima, and Senkaku/Diaoyu between it and Russia, Korea and China respectively) so the institutional prescription for Japan itself may be seen as part of a long-term design to ensure its submission.47 As Japan’s then Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, Terasaki Taro, wrote in his memoirs, in terms of sequence the Peace Treaty was followed by the Security Treaty which was in turn followed by the “Administrative Agreement” (a name later changed to Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA) which covered detailed arrangements for troop stationing and privilege, but in reality the Peace Treaty came first because it was required in order to have the Security Treaty, and the Security Treaty was in turn required in order to get the Status of Forces Agreement, in which the detailed rights that Dulles insisted on in 1951, amounting to extraterritorial privilege for US occupying forces, were spelled out. 48 Public attention was minimal. Six and a half decades later, these arrangements have still not been substantially revised. Three years after San Francisco, the domestic political arrangements appropriate to a dependent and US-directed Japanese state, the so45 46 47

48

Toyoshita, Showa Tenno, p. 215. Toyoshita, Showa tenno, pp. 148–181 passim; 200–201. Kimie Hara, ed., The San Francisco System and Its Legacies: Continuation, Transformation, and Historical Reconciliation in the Asia-Pacific, New York and London, Routledge, 2014. Quoted in Magosaki Ukeru, Sengoshi no shotai, 1945–2012, Sogensha, 2012, pp. 117–118.

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called “1955 system” were set in place under the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). The LDP had been established in part with CIA funds and Kishi Nobusuke (Prime Minister 1957–1960) played a key role in bridging the contradictions of the formula and fusing elements of pre-war and wartime thinking onto the new, American-designed state. Kishi, grandfather and political role model to early 21st century Prime Minister Abe, had been a key figure in the design of the institutions of militarist Japan in the 1930s and 1940s, its “Albert Speer,” and as such a prominent member of the government that declared war on the United States in 1941. Kishi served as architect of post-war democratic Japan in the 1950s and 1960s and became one of the two “most influential agents the United States ever recruited [and who] helped carry out the CIA’s mission to control the government.”49 Meeting regularly with his CIA case officer, he received direction in basic political tactics and access to a flow of secret funds in an arrangement that then continued under his successors for “at least fifteen years, under four American presidents … into the 1970s.”50 The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has ruled the country ever since, with only brief lapses from power in 1993–1994 and again in 2009-2012. The 1951 San Francisco Treaty system, and the 1955 Japanese political structures built upon it, were subsequently consolidated by key developments in 1959 and 1960. In December 1959, Japan’s Supreme Court ruled that matters pertaining to the security treaty were not to be subjected to judicial contest because they were “highly political” and concerned Japan’s very existence, a judgement that had the effect of elevating the Security Treaty above the constitution and immunizing it from any challenge at law. The US base presence thus entrenched, the way was opened to the revision of the Security Treaty a month later.51 Lower courts from time to time thereafter declared the obvious, that Ampo, and the presence of US forces in Japan under it, were unconstitutional, but higher courts overruled them, holding that the question of constitutionality was a political one and the will of the legislature was supreme. 49

50 51

Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 116 Ibid, 116–121. Details in Gavan McCormack and Satoko Oka Norimatsu, Resistant Islands – Okinawa versus Japan and the United States, Rowman and Littlefield, 2012, pp. 53–54.

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When the revision/renewal of the San Francisco security arrangements between the US and Japan was submitted for Diet approval in 1960, in the form of a bill entitled the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security (commonly known just as Ampo, from the Japanese abbreviation) protest virtually paralysed the capital. The bill was rammed through the House of Representatives in the pre-dawn hours of May 20, in the absence of the Opposition, amid such turmoil that President Eisenhower had to cancel his planned visit for fear of a hostile reception and Prime Minister Kishi to resign immediately afterwards.. The memory of that crisis has deterred both governments from submitting the relationship to parliamentary or public review ever since. The Ampo treaty ratified the continuing presence of the US bases and a subordinate Japanese role in the Cold War order.52 Secure against constitutional challenge behind the defenses erected by the Supreme Court, and carefully defended against public or political debate by being removed from parliamentary scrutiny, the Ampo treaty relationship was steadily reinforced. From 1954, under strong US pressure, Japan also built up its “own” forces. Since they could not, under the constitution, be regular army, navy and air force, they became ground, sea, and air “Self-Defense Forces.” Throughout the Cold War their principle role in practice was as a national disaster relief force. To convert them into a conventional, fighting, force has been a key objective of governments since then. Post-San Francisco, the occupation of mainland Japan thus did not end, though its character changed. The forces that till 28 April 1952 were part of the “occupation” were from 1 May stationed in the same bases and doing the same things (not least of which was fighting the war in Korea) but henceforth under the joint security treaty. In the course of the six decades that followed, Japan grew enormously in stature, wealth and power but the economic super-power remained to a marked degree still occupied by its former conqueror. The Amami Islands reverted to Japanese administrative control in 1953, the Ogasawara Islands in 1968 and the Ryukyu Islands, resuming the name Okinawa, in 1972. But the US bases retained essential autonomy, concentrated most heavily in Okinawa but with major assets throughout the country. The Marine Corps and Air Force remained entrenched in Okinawa – Kadena Air Force base and major Marine Corps bases at 52

Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between Japan and the United States of America, 19 January 1960.

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Camps Kinser, Foster, Futenma, and Schwab. In mainland Japan, Yokosuka and Sasebo became major US naval bases, the former homeport to the US 7th Fleet. The US Air Force retained Misawa (Aomori) and the Marine Corps Iwakuni in Yamaguchi prefecture. Much of the airspace above Japan’s capital remained controlled by the US Air Force (from its Yokota Base). Scattered throughout Japan were the housing, hospitals, hotels, schools, golf courses (two in Tokyo), most (roughly 70 per cent) of their costs met by Japan under the “Host Nation Support” (commonly known as the “sympathy budget”). The Japan-based US forces enjoyed, and continued to enjoy, a measure of semi-colonial extraterritorial privilege under the Status of Forces Agreement scarcely revised since San Francisco. Because geopolitical and economic advantage stemming from the settlement rested with Japan, few questioned its legitimacy or its compatibility with Japan’s sovereignty. It begins to seem possible, however, improbable, that the US military dominance that began in 1945 might continue for a full century. Instead of liquidating it, on all sides one hears calls for it to be reinforced. Despite the statement of the San Francisco Treaty’s purpose being “the maintenance of international peace and security in the Far East” and its commitment to settle “any international disputes in which they may be involved by peaceful means … and to refrain … from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state” (Article 1), in practice it became a global agreement to exercise force in cases where there was no threat to Japan or in the “Far East” against successive states in Asia and Africa, were central. Nominally a system for the defense of Japan, it is better understood as a system for the defense (and expansion) of the United States. Of the eight hundred or so US bases that now ring the world, none are more important. Over 70 per cent of those in Japan are concentrated on Okinawa’s 0.6 per cent of the national land. Part of the difficulty of suggesting the arrangement is unjust or should be revised stems from the fact that their presence is at the express wish of then emperor Hirohito. The US-Japan relationship under San Francisco was generally understood as one under which Japan provided base and other facilities and the US undertook to defend Japan. It was a “security treaty” but not an alliance. At least initially there was no implication of any reciprocal obligation on Japan’s part. Fully 21 years were to pass before it was officially referred to as an alliance. When the Communique following the May 1981 meeting between Japanese Prime Minister Suzuki Zenko and President Ronald Reagan referred to the “Japan-US alliance

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relationship” it caused a furore. The Prime Minster lamely explained to the Diet that the word “alliance” held no military significance. Foreign Minister Ito Masayoshi, who pointed out that a military element was a necessary part of an alliance relationship had to resign to take responsibility.53 Just two years later, the protestation of “no military significance” was abandoned and Suzuki’s successor as Prime Minister, Nakasone Yasuhiro, declared the Japanese archipelago an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” for the United States in its military confrontation with the Soviet Union. Nobody seriously questioned the term, or its military significance, thereafter. Few Japanese people take offence at the mockery of Japanese sovereignty. Most, close to 80 per cent according to opinion surveys, accept the Japan-US Security treaty system, i.e. the San Francisco Treaty system in its 1960 revision, all major national parties agree on the need to confirm, reinforce, or deepen the Treaty-based relationship with only a minuscule figure wanting to abrogate or fundamentally revise it.54 The significant exception, however, is Okinawa, where only around 10 per cent of people support the system and up to 90 per cent reject the measures agreed on by the two governments to reinforce it. Since three-quarters of US forces in Japan are based in the prefecture, and it alone is ear-marked for construction of a major new base complex, it means that the system imposes its heaviest burden upon those who least support it.55 Even without formal revision, however, Article 9 has been steadily whittled down, first to create the “Self Defense Force,” or “SDF,” then to have it available for subordinate roles within US regional and global strategy. From the end of the Cold War, the SDF slowly began to transmute into a global force, deployed in accordance with the 1992 United Nations Peace Keeping Cooperation Law. The force whose constitutional warrant was the defense of Japan came to be dispatched on non-combatant, humanitarian roles (mostly civil construction and engineering) as part of “peacekeeping” missions to Cambodia, Mozambique, the Golan Heights, East Timor, Nepal, and as part of various “coalitions of the willing” (fulfilling “alliance” obligations to the US) 53

54

55

Following the Suzuki Zenko-Ronald Reagan Summit, See “Joint Communique,” 8 May 1981, Department of State Bulletin 2051, June 1981. Cabinet Secretariat, “Jieitai, boei mondai ni kansuru seron chosa,” 2009, http:// www8.cao.go.jp/survey/h20/h20-bouei/2–6.html/ “Shuin sen: ‘Kokubogun’ tomadou Yonaguni,” Okinawa taimusu, 11 December 2012.

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in the Indian Ocean and Iraq, followed by Djibouti and South Sudan. However admirable, at least in theory, the “peacekeeping” role, it was not clear that a Japanese contribution to the international community could only be performed by an armed fighting unit, while the “coalition of the willing “cooperation brought Japan even closer to the brink (albeit in “rear support” role) of engagement in the very “threat or use of force” banned by its constitution. Two controversies highlighted the fine line Japan was treading. In 2008, Nagoya High Court ruled that the despatch of the Air Self Defense Force to Iraq (from 2004 to 2006), on a supposedly “humanitarian” mission in response to a US directive to “show the flag” and put its “boots on the ground” had been both unconstitutional and illegal. It violated both the constitution’s Article 9 because “in modern warfare the transport of personnel and supplies constitutes a key part of combat” and Japanese planes ferrying US combat forces to and from battle, constituted “an act integral to the use of force by another country.” It also contravened the 2003 “Law on Special Measures for Assisting Iraq Reconstruction” because of the provision in that law that deployment be confined to “noncombat” zones.56 In response, the Prime Minister, Chief Cabinet Secretary, Minister of Defense, and Air Self Defense Force (ASDF) Chief of Staff, all dismissed and declared their intention to ignore the Nagoya judgement.57 In November 2012, Japan dispatched a GSDF (Ground Self Defense Force) unit of engineers on a “blue beret” UN peacekeeping mission to South Sudan. In chaotic political-military conditions, the risk of the Japanese becoming entangled in the ongoing civil war was high and the constraining effect of the constitutional principle that the use of weapons was confined to “self-defense” was problematic from the start. Under revised duties and rules of engagement adopted in November 2016 (in accord with the peace and security legislation adopted the previous year), the engineers were authorized to engage in combat to assist their allies if under attack. The “selfdefense” principle enshrined in Article 9 was thus stretched to the limit, with the real possibility of entanglement in an ongoing African civil war. 56

57

Kyodo, “High Court: ASDF mission to Iraq illegal,” Japan Times, 18 April 2008. See also Gavan McCormack, “’Conservatism’ and ‘nationalism’: The Japan Puzzle,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 22 June 2008 and David McNeill, “Secrets and lies,” Japan Times, 24 Januay 2010. McCormack, “‘Conservatism’ and ‘Nationalism’,” op. cit.

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Furthermore, late in 2016 it was discovered that “daily reports” from the units on the ground in South Sudan to Tokyo for the period 7 to 12 July 2016 had disappeared. The “lost” (subsequently “found”) daily reports covered precisely the period of maximum military conflict around the capital, Juba, and referred to the situation on the ground as one of “military conflict” or “battle” (sento) between government and anti-government forces. Had that been publicly known at the time, the justification for dispatch would have collapsed. Challenged, however, Defense Minister Inada Tomomi told the Diet that despite the use of such a term, the government did not consider the situation warranted it because one of the parties was not properly organized to constitute a party to battle “in the legal sense.” With one and a half million people fleeing the country as its institutions collapsed in a spiral into violence and lawlessness,58 Inada’s evasive account lacked credibility. The SDF force was withdrawn in May and she resigned on 28 July 2017.59 Overall, the Japanese troop dispatch to the Indian Ocean, Iraq, and South Sudan could be seen as part of a comprehensive effort to internationalize the SDF, turning it into a “regular” instrument for the projection of Japan as a “great” power and the service of the “alliance.” The relaxation of constraints on the exercise of force as in South Sudan pointed to Japan eventually being able to serve alongside US forces in “coalitions of the willing” at US request. The Asahi commented: “Abe seems to be using the term ‘pacifism’ only as a means to win public support for his attempt to allow Japan to exercise its right to collective selfdefense by changing the government’s interpretation of the Constitution concerning this issue.”60

58

59

60

Masuda Go, ‘Minami Sudan PKO ‘jieitai ‘nippo’ jiron koron,” NHK, 21 February 2017 http://ww.nhk.or.jp/kaisetsu-blog/100/263592.html/ She was also much criticized for campaigning for LDP candidates in the Tokyo Metrpolitan Assembly election of June 2017 in the name of “Ministry of Defense, Self Defense Forces, Minister of Defense, LDP.” However, it was the narrow issue of the records whose existence she had denied on which the matter of her resignation turned, rather than the broader, and much more serious, questions of the legality or constitutionality of Japanese intervention or her intervention in the election. “Abe’s ‘proactive’ pacifism should not be used to promote collective self-defense,” editorial, Asahi shimbun, 28 September 2013 http://ajw.asahi.com/article/views/ editorial/AJ201309280023/

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When the Maritime Self-Defense Forces (MSDF) set up their base in 2010 in Djibouti, it was part of the design to combat Indian Ocean piracy but it as also Japan’s first, and most likely not last, post-1945 overseas military base. The piracy threat was soon overcome, but there was no doubt the base would remain. ABE 1: 1993–2007

Almost a half century passed after the end of the China and Pacific war before Japanese attention turned to address seriously the question of war responsibility. With the long, post-war hegemony of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) weakened and then fractured, albeit temporarily, the Diet in 1993 adopted the Kono Yohei statement admitting state responsibility for the “comfort women” system during World War II under which the Imperial Japanese Army recruited large numbers of women across Asia, often forcibly, to serve its soldiers sexually, and then in 1995 adopted a resolution of apology for Japan’s past colonialism and aggression. Textbooks began to cover previously untouched questions of Japan’s modern history, including comfort women, the Nanjing Massacre (mass killing of Chinese civilians following the capture of the city by Imperial Japanese forces in December 1937), Unit 731 (the chemical and biological warfare unit based at Harbin in Northeast China where thousands of prisoners were deliberately infected with diseases and then killed), and the truth about the Battle of Okinawa (in which roughly one-fourth of the prefecture’s population died in the futile attempt to delay the allied invasion of mainland Japan, in the most notorious cases being ordered by Japanese military units to commit suicide). Proponents of a “proud” or “beautiful” Japanese history have long taken particular umbrage at reference to the “collective suicide” (shudan jiketsu) that occurred principally on the Okinawan islands of Tokashiki and Zamami between March 1945 and the end of hostilities a few months later when, in some cases, entire families, driven by indoctrination and fear into collective madness, killed each other by hand grenades or other, improvised, means. Apologists for the “proud” and “beautiful” refer to this as a glorious act of self-immolation, and critics as “mass death [caused] by the imperial army’s coercion and inducement.” In 2005, proponents for the apologetic view launched an action against Nobel Prize winning author Kenzaburo Oe alleging libel because of his naming some Japanese officers allegedly involved in

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issuing such orders. The Supreme Court resolved the matter in 2011 with a judgment in Oe’s favor, thereby confirming the historicity of the events.61 In reaction, however, conservative forces rallied, insisting on a “correct” history, centered on the country’s pure and proud traditions. Abe Shinzo, a member of the Diet since 1993, was a core member of this group from the start. He and his colleagues justified the wars of the 1930s and 1940s as fought for the liberation of East Asia, denied or belittled the wartime atrocities and crimes committed by Japan, and promoted a proud, “beautiful” (and “correct”) view of Japanese history, that should be disseminated in school texts. 62 As one of the founders of the movement put it, the study of Japanese history should be “subject to the ultimate moral imperative of whether or not it serves to inculcate a sense of pride in being Japanese.”63 Such “pride” dictated hostility to “masochistic” views of history and the downplaying of Japanese World War II war crimes such as the Nanjing Massacre and the mass mobilization of women as sex slaves. When Abe defined his agenda as to “shrug off the husk of the postwar state” and “recover Japan’s independence,” the US was less than happy because that could only mean replacing US-imposed structures with “Japanese” ones, and the “Japanese” ones he was most attached to were the pre-1945, emperor worshipping, Yasukuni-centered and “Greater East Asian” ones to which his grandfather, Kishi Nobusuke, had been devoted. While his efforts to expand Japan’s military contribution to the US weighed heavily in his favor in Washington, his ideological orientation towards wartime, fascist Japan, once America’s bitter enemy, was hard for it to tolerate. When Abe became Prime Minister in 2006, his “beautiful” Japan had no room for “shameful” references to comfort women or wartime atrocities. Instead, he called for cultivation of moral and patriotic education – specifically, respect for Japan’s national symbols (flag and anthem) and for its “unique” culture and history. He saw 61

62 63

(Aniya Masaaki, “Compulsory mass suicide, the Battle of Okinawa, and Japan’s textbook controversy” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 6 January 2008; Gavan McCormack and Satoko Oka Norimatsu, Resistant Islands – Okinawa Confronts Japan and the United States (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012), p. 32. Abe Shinzo, Utsukushii kuni e, Tokyo: Bungeishunjusha, 2006. Quoted in “Nobukatsu Fujioka,” Wikipedia, accessed 10 March 2013. http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobukatsu_Fujioka

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his political mission as the extension of his grandfather’s. Though nominally conservative, he pursued fundamental reform of all three of the country’s basic charters: the Constitution (1946), the Fundamental Law of Education (1947), and Ampo (the 1951 security treaty with the United States, revised in 1960). Where his grandfather, Kishi, had in 1960 forced the revised Security Treaty with the United States through the Diet, setting the basic parameters of the security relationship that persist to this day, Abe committed himself to further transforming the relationship so that it would become more equal – a true alliance. At the same time, he would restore elements of what was to him the “proud,” emperor-centered, era of the early 20th century and somehow also play a central role in a 21st century East Asia. While the post-Cold War United States sometimes referred to the goal of making the US-Japan relationship “mature,”64 what it meant by that was for Japan to increase its share of the burden, especially in military terms, not for it to assume any equal right to determine policy or direction. The basic idea of expanded Japanese contribution to the US underpinned the plan to “reorganize US forces in Japan” when Abe was Chief Cabinet Secretary in 2005. He began implementing the plan during his first term as prime minister from 2006 to 2007. The reorganization required reinforcing Japanese military integration under US direction – and it was assumed to also require revision of Japan’s constitution, at least by removal of the restrictions under its pacifist clause. Abe’s efforts to advance the US security agenda sat uneasily alongside his efforts to shift Japan away from the principles of its USinfluenced post-war regime, including the peace constitution and the Education Fundamental Law of 1947. Abe and other “conservatives” had long objected to the latter’s idealistic and universalist tone. Some (including Nakasone Yasuhiro, Prime Minister 1982–1987) complained that such education had “destroyed the nation” through “its emphasis on rights” and that the words of the Fundamental Law were so much “distilled water,” lacking the national spirit of imperial Japan once declared in the Rescript on Education of 1890.65 64

65

The United States and Japan: Advancing Toward a Mature Partnership, Special Report of the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University, 11 October 2000. Yasuhiro Nakasone, Japan: A State Strategy for the 21st Century (New York: Routledge Curzon, 2002), p. 218.

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Then, service of the emperor had been the highest ideal, and death in his cause, celebrated particularly in institutions such as Yasukuni Shrine, the ultimate glory. These appear to be, for Abe, the “good old days.” Abe in 2006 succeeded in accomplishing fundamental revision of the law so that, alongside the “distilled water” global humanist clauses of the law he inserted inculcation of “love of country and homeland” as an educational goal. 66 Since then, education has been required by law to inculcate patriotism.67 Its “Shinto” concern for the purity and the inviolability of the imperial essence makes it difficult to accept responsibility for Japan’s wartime comfort women system of sexual slavery. To have children in schools taught about such things would be to teach them, as one prominent figure in the historical revisionist movement put it, that the Japanese people were “cruel, lewd, and dumb.”68 In 2000, following a Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal that returned a “guilty verdict against Emperor Hirohito on counts including sexual slavery,” Abe intervened to order the removal of passages which had offended him in a television documentary on the tribunal.69 The “New History Textbooks” Abe and his colleagues promoted were designed to cultivate love of country and to turn back the tide of what they called “masochistic” history – history that blamed Japan for war and its atrocities. References to atrocities by the armed forces of imperial Japan were watered down and passive formulations – women being abducted and turned into sex slaves – preferred to active formulations in which the Imperial Japanese Army was responsible for the abducting and enslaving. The word “massacre” was to be avoided in discussions of the infamous Nanjing events of late 1937. As for revision to the constitution, however, Abe at the end of his first term had to be content with passage of a law spelling out the procedures towards it, while postponing the revision itself. 66

67 68

69

See discussion in Gavan McCormack, Client State: Japan in the American Embrace, London and New York, Verso, 2007, chapter 6. Gavan McCormack, Client State: Japan in the American Embrace, pp.142–143. Fujioka Nobukatsu, quoted in Gavan McCormack, “Holocaust denial a la Japonaise,” Japan Policy Research Institute, Working Paper No 28, October 1997. http://www.jpri.org/publications/workingpapers/wp38.html/ Gavan McCormack, “War and Japan’s memory wars: the media and the globalization of consciousness,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 13 February 2005.

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Abe’s revisionist historical views disturbed the US government and outraged Japan’s neighbors. References to “shared values,” commonly understood as “freedom, democracy, basic human rights, and the rule of law,” invited questions when he and most of his cabinet belonged to organizations that looked back to wartime Japan for inspiration. These organizations include the Liberal View of History Study Group (founded 1995), the Committee to Produce New History Textbooks or Tsukurukai (founded 1997), the Diet Members’ Associations “for the Passing on of a Correct History” (founded 1995), and for “Reflection on Japan’s Future and History Education” (founded 1997), and for “Bright Japan” (founded 2013), the “Diet Members Association of Nihon Kaigi (literally “Japan Conference, founded 1997) and the “Shinto Politics League (founded much earlier, in 1969, but assuming added importance under Abe as a core member and from 2013 its president).70 Abe’s Shintoism included a particular devotion to Yasukuni Shrine, which once functioned as a core institution of Japanese militarism and still glorifies all who died in the service of successive emperors, including fourteen “Class A” war criminals. It also houses a museum that presents an account of the war through an apologetic lens as a good and just war. It rejects the judgement of the Tokyo Tribunal (the International Military Tribunal for the Far East or IMTFE), denies the “Nanjing massacre” and the existence (or the role of the state in establishing or running such a system) of the Comfort Women, demands moral and correct education, and insists on the “beautiful” Japan that all Japanese should love. While Abe called for all Japanese to “love” their state, Japan’s top business leader, Keidanren’s Mitarai Fujio, called on Japanese workers to love both their country and their corporations.71 Nihon Kaigi is Japan’s largest neo-nationalist, historical revisionist movement. Founded in 1997, it is made up of religious (Shinto and Buddhist) groups, media and corporate leaders, local and national political figures, and academics. Its roots are to be found in two early 70

71

Tawara Yoshifumi, “Abe Shinzo naikaku no cho takaha no daijin tachi” Shukan kinyobi, 14 September 2007), p. 13; Tawara, “Osagari de takaha hikitsunagu Fukuda naikaku,” Shukan kinyobi, 5 October 2007, p. 12. Nihon Keizai dantai rengokai, “Kibo no kuni, Nihon” 1 January 2007. Discussed in Nagata Minoru (introduced by Gavan McCormack), “Love your state, Love your boss: Whither Japan,” Japan Focus, 9 January 2007. http://apjjf.org/-NagataMinoru/2315/article.html/

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20th century religious movements, the “House of Birth and Growth” (Seicho no Ie, founded 1930) and the Association of Shinto Shrines (Jinja Honcho, founded 1946 and overseeing 80,000 Shinto shrines nationwide). Its view of Japan is the one expressed in 2000 (cited above) by then Prime Minister Mori Yoshiro, as that of an “emperorcentered country of the gods.” That is precsely the sense of identity held by those who led Japan to the disastrous wars of the 1930s and 1940s. Commonly known as “state Shinto” it derives from the militarist and fascist Japanese conception of the Japanese state that was generated in the late 19th century and reached its apogee in 1945. It is distinct from the common Japanese folk religion of reverence for nature and respect for the ancestors associated with local shrines and seasonal festivals. Nihon Kaigi grew to have a formidable, nationwide organization, headed between 2001 and 2015 by a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Miyoshi Toru, and a parliamentary League to which as of December 2016 290 members of the lower house of the national Diet belonged.72 Abe and his Deputy Prime Minister, Aso Taro, were both special advisers. It played a key role in having the Hinomaru and Kimigayo adopted by law as national flag and anthem, accomplished in 1999, and in revising the Fundamental Law of Education (accomplished in 2006). It has also been (and is now) at the forefront of the movement to revise the constitution and to restore Yasukuni Shrine as a national war shrine (discussed further below).73 The Nihon Kaigi platform constitutes a contemporary version of early 20th century Kokutai, or national polity theory, the unique and superior Japanese way. It may be summarized as: reverence for the emperor; abolition of the “US-imposed” constitution and its substitution by one that recognizes Japan’s right to possess and exercise armed force (i.e. by deleting Article 9); restoration of a politics in which national reputation is central and Japan’s war dead are venerated at Yasukuni shrine; centrality to patriotism and to the national anthem, flag, and a quintessentially Japanese sense of history and identity; and a bolstering of defense forces in order to counter threats posed by China and North Korea. 72

73

As of July 2014, (“Nihon saidai no uyoku soshiki, Nihon kaigi o kensho,” Tokyo shimbun, 31 July 2015). See my Client State: Japan in the American Embrace, London and New York, Verso, 2007, pp. 10–11. And for an excellent updated overview, Sachie Mizohata: “Nihon Kaigi: Empire, contradiction, and Japan’s future,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 1 November 2016.

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And, not least, it “has unceasingly pressured, through various local and national groups, against initiatives on gender-free education, sex education in schools, and gender equality in political participation, while promoting traditional family values, gender norms, and women’s primary roles as mothers and wives at home.”74 Literary critic Kato Norihiro sees Nihon Kaigi’s emergence as an expression of Japanese anxiety: “Like the Tea Party in the United States, it is a product of deep conservative anxieties about the future … Both Nippon Kaigi and the Tea Party cast themselves as ‘grassroots’ movements that represent the ‘traditional’ values of ‘the people.’ One of the Tea Party’s slogans is ‘Take Back America,’ and in the last election one of the L.D.P.’s was ‘Take Back Japan’.”75

Since Kato wrote in that vein, the “Japan is Great” movement swept across Japan, with strong official sanction, intent upon propagating to the world the sense of Japan as “The good country, the pure country, the one and only land of the gods.”76 In 2006 and 2007, the parliaments of Canada and the European Union adopted resolutions denouncing Abe’s equivocations on the Comfort Women, and, in 2007, the US House of Representatives passed Resolution 121, rebuking Japan for its perceived failure to acknowledge and compensate victims of the comfort women system. Where Abe undoubtedly pleased Washington by recalibrating his political vocabulary away from “beautiful Japan” and “shedding the husk of the post-war state” to positive pacifism and contributions to global security, his revisionist modern history did not easily adjust to the acceptance of Japanese responsibility for the wartime system of sexual slavery. His equivocation and reluctance to acknowledge that responsibility vexed Japan’s relations with the outside world, from Beijing to Washington. 74

75

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Mizohata, p. 4, quoting from Yamaguchi Tomomi, “Nippon kaigi no tagetto no hitotsu wa kempo 24 jo no kaiaku,” in Nihon Kaigi to jinja honcho, Tokyo, Shukan kinyobi, 2016, pp. 172–183. Kato Norihiro, “Tea party politics in Japan: Japan’s rising nationalism,” New York Times, 12 September 2014. “The Japanese nation,” extracted from second grade elementary school textbook, quoted in Hayakawa Tadanori, “The story of the nation” ‘Japan is great’,” The AsiaPacific Journal – Japan Focus, 15 March 2017.

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By the time that first term ended in September 2007, his team had shunted aside many of the “conservatives” who had been central to the Liberal Democratic party during the previous half-century, forcing some to retire and “assassinating” others till, as Kyoto University’s Saeki Keishi put it, “there is no trace of conservatism in today’s LDP.”77 ABE 2: 2012–2016

At the time of Abe’s second term as prime minister began in December 2012, fifteen members of the twenty-member Cabinet and 290 members of the National Diet belonged to Nihon Kaigi, and seventeen, together with the Cabinet Secretary, two assistant cabinet secretaries, and all three special assistants to the Prime Minister, and 326 (slightly less than half of all 722 members) were members of the Shinto Politics League.78 A strongly Abe connected “Sosei Nihon” (“Creation Japan”) Diet members organization, set up in 2010 headed by Abe himself and dedicated to moving Japan “beyond the post-war state” by fundamental constitutional reform had 190 members as of 2015.79 As of 2016, a remarkable 362 members, or roughly half, of the National Diet, together with 17 members of Cabinet, also belonged to the Diet members Association entitled, “Let us all go together to worship at Yasukuni.”80 It was at the “Creation Japan” Diet members organization meeting in March 2017 that Abe declared the time had come to revise the constitution (discussed below), for which he set the target date of 2020.81 Prominent members of these organizations were noted for comments such as the suggestion that Japan should learn from the Hitler 77 78

79 80

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“Hoshu rinen o hoki shita jiminto,” Asahi Shimbun, 15 September 2007. Tawara Yoshifumi, (Kodomo to kyokasho zenkoku netto 21), “Dai sanji Abe Shinzo naikaku no cho takaha (kyokuu) no daijintachi,” (Abe naikaku o shihai suru Nihon kaigi no menmen, Kusanone hoshu undo), 14 February 2015, updated October 2016.) Tawara, op. cit. Tawara Yoshifumi, (Kodomo to kyokasho zenkoku netto 21), “Dai sanji Abe Shinzo naikaku no cho takaha (kyokuu) no daijintachi,” Slightly different figures are given in “Jiminto kakuryo ga ‘Yasukuni’ ha – Nihon kaigi nado kanren giin,” Akahata, 5 May 2016. It gives the figures of 15, 19, and 11 respectively as the number of members belonging to Nihon Kaigi, Shinto Politics League, and the “Let us all go together to worship at Yasukuni” Association. There are no “official” membership figures. “Kaiken (soryoku agete) Sosei Nihon no kaigo de uttae,” Mainichi Shimbun, 4 March 2017.

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example, the people of Germany simply waking one day to find their constitution no longer meant what they had thought it did (Deputy Prime Minister Aso Taro, on 29 July 2013),82 or (Internal Affairs Minister Takaichi Sanae and LDP Party Policy chief (later Defense Minister), Inada Tomomi) featured in photographs hobnobbing with leaders of the explicitly Nazi “National Socialist Workers Party” and the chauvinist and violently anti-foreign Zaitokukai (Citizens’ Association Opposed to Privileges for Korean-in-Japan Residents).83 Others expressed views such as that of LDP party chief Ishiba Shigeru, writing in his blog on 29 November 2013, that after all there was little difference in substance between vociferous demonstrators (against base construction in Okinawa) and terrorists, or LDP Upper house member Mihara Junko who quoted with approval the wartime slogan “All the world under one roof ” (hakko ichiu)84 a term with more or less the connotation of the German expression “Deutschland uber alles.” The mass circulation writer Sono Ayako, a close associate of the Prime Minister, opined that Japan needed to import labor, but that it was better that the races be confined to separate living spaces in accord with the South Africa’s apartheid model of race relations.85 Possessing a strong ideological agenda and backed by the well-organized Buddhist vote, Abe found it possible to concentrate an unprecedented measure of control over the levers of state. He made sure to nominate close associates to special national policy organs and advisory committees. On the eve of his assuming office as Abe’s Minister for Education, Shimomura Hakubun declared his fear that Japan faced “decay, and might even be destroyed, if things continue as they are … Due to the current Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) defense policy, the Senkaku Islands and Takeshima have been stolen away. … Right now, Japan is not functioning as a nation. … The 67 years since the end of World War ll have 82

83

84 85

“Japan should follow Nazi route on revising constitution, minister says,” The Guardian, 2 August 2013. A little later, Aso returned to the zhitler theme, cmmenting that Hitler was “no good even if his motive was right” (sic), i.e. implying aproval of Hitler’s motives. (“Kako ni mo nachisu genkyu, Aso-shi hitora hatsugen tekkai,” Tokyo shimbun, 31 August 2017). Justin McCurry, “Neo-Nazi photos pose headache for Shinzo Abe,” The Guardian, 9 September 2014. In the Diet on 16 March 2015. On Sono Ayako, see Tomohiro Osaki, “Outrage grows over Sono ‘Apartheid’ column,” Japan Times, 20 February 2015.

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been a history of Japan’s destruction. Now is our only chance to remake the country. … Fundamentally, freedom from the post-war regime means discarding the Tokyo Trials historical viewpoint.”86

As Education Minster, Shimomura set about recovering Japan’s “beautiful” nature by expunging “shameful” slurs on its history such as the allegations relating to “Comfort Women” or to wartime atrocities. 87 The agenda of Abe, Shimomura, and other Shintoist members of the new cabinet, often thought to be conservative, was in fact radical, since its aim was nothing less than the transformation of the Japanese state. What Abe and his chosen associates seemed to find repugnant were precisely the democratic, citizen-based, and anti-militarist qualities of the state over which they presided. Nihon Kaigi and other organizations of explicitly history revisionist bent, would in a European context be proscribed and membership itself treated as a crime. Philosopher Takahashi Tetsuya asked ruefully: “How can one not be sick at heart at the thought that, 70 years after the war, nearly 300 members of the National Diet belong to such organizations [as the Shinto Politics League]?”88

He was writing in January 2015. By May 2016, the number of Diet members had reached 326, almost half of the total. Abe’s message uniquely linked that radical neo-nationalist agenda with insistence on priority to US requests for reinforced military cooperation. The contradiction between the two was not easily resolved, however. His strong sense of a distinctively emperor-centered identity and reluctance to have the labels “aggressive” and “offensive” attached to the wars of the 1930s and 1940s vexed the United States, which could scarcely look with equanimity on denials of responsibility for the war, for the comfort women system, and for the Nanjing massa86

87

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APA Group, “Big Talk 257 - Japan Must Take Another Look at All Facets of its Modern History, Including the Kono Statement, Murayama Statement, and Tokyo Trials Historical Viewpoint,” Hakubun Shimomura interviewed by Toshio Motoya, http://www.apa.co.jp/appletown/bigtalk/bt1212/english_index.html/ “Abe days are here again – Japan in the World,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, 26 December 2012. http://japanfocus.org/-Gavan-McCormack/3873/. Takahashi Tetsuya, “Kyokuu ka suru seiji,” Sekai, January 2015, 150–161, at p. 151.

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cre, or on the efforts to rewrite Japan’s history so as to fill Japan with patriotic fervor. Above all, Abe’s proposal to “shrug off the husk of the post-war state” and “recover Japan’s independence” could only mean replacing US-imposed structures with “Japanese” (i.e. pre-1945 fascist and emperor-worshipping) ones.89 In the first year of his second term (2013), friction between the Abe government and the US government mounted. Japan’s identity dilemma was unresolved: did sovereignty reside in the people, as the constitution would have it, or in the government of the US, as power-brokers on both sides of the Pacific tended to assume? Abe’s efforts to secure a US guarantee to defend Japan under the 1960 security treaty in the event of any clash with China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands alarmed the US government because of the potential of embroiling the United States in conflict with China. Consequently, on his visit to Washington in February 2013, Abe was treated merely to lunch with the US president. There was neither a dinner nor a joint press conference. The subsequent communiqué made no reference to Abe’s Chinafocused security agenda but simply committed him to Obama’s trade and investment policies.90 Abe’s reception contrasted with that given to the South Korean and Chinese presidents in later months of the same year. The former delivered an address to a joint meeting of Congress on 8 May 2013 (the fifth by a Korean leader, whereas to that point no Japanese leader had been so honored) and the latter spent two nights in June as a guest of President Obama at a Californian resort. The US Library of Congress Research Service partly explained this difference by referring to what it called a “widely held view” that “Abe embraces a revisionist view of Japanese history that rejects the notion of imperial Japanese aggression and victimization of other Asians.”91 Abe continued through that year to seek US understanding for a visit to Yasukuni. Conscious that he had disappointed many of his domestic rightist followers by not making one during his first term six years earlier, he argued that the United States should not object because 89 90

91

A recurrent Abe theme. See: “Abe Shinzo,” http://www.shinzo-abe.or.jp/analects/ “Joint Statement by the United States and Japan,” 22 February 2013, (Washington, White House, 22 February 2013) http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-pressoffice/2013/02/22joint-statement-united-states-and-japan/ Emma Chanlett-Avery, et al., “Japan-US Relations: Issues for Congress,” Congressional Research Service, 1 May 2013.

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Yasukuni was merely a Japanese equivalent to the Arlington National Cemetery.92 The US government disagreed, and took steps to publicize its disagreement by sending Secretaries of State and Defense, John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, to lay wreaths at the secular Chidorigafuchi War Cemetery in Japan – making the point that the secular Chidorigafuchi, not the religious Yasukuni, was the Arlington equivalent. With evident reluctance, Abe refrained from formal participation in the Yasukuni spring and summer rituals in 2013. In October, however, he visited another Shinto institution with close imperial links, the Grand Shrine at Ise, bringing with him eight members of his cabinet, for the first prime ministerial visit since 1929.93 In each subsequent year, to 2018, Abe continued this practice of Ise Shrine worship, especially at each New Year, despite the constitution’s principle (Article 20) that “The State and its organs shall refrain from religious education or any other religious activity.” On Yasukuni, however, the US was not to be moved. After final pleas in 2013 to try to secure US permission to visit, including a telephone call from US Vice-President Joe Biden, were rebuffed,94 Abe went ahead with his worship there on 26 December. Not only the US but also China, South Korea, North Korea protested, as did the European Union.95 The US embassy in Tokyo released a statement that “the United States is disappointed that Japan’s leadership has taken an action that will exacerbate tensions with Japan’s neighbors.”96 The Congressional Research Service restated their “concern that Tokyo could upset regional relations in ways that hurt US interests.”97 92

93

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95

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“Japan is back – A conversation with Shinzo Abe,” Foreign Affairs (July–August 2013). The occasion was the sengyo no gi rituals, held once every 20 years, in which the two main shrine buildings are demolished and new ones constructed (“Abe sparks constitutional debate with attendance at Ise Jingu ceremony,” Asahi Shimbun, 3 October 2013). Agence France-Presse, “Biden warned Japan’s Abe about visiting Yasukuni Shrine,” South China Morning Post, 29 January 2014. Maaike Okano-Heijmans and Frans-Paul van der Putten, “The EU should stay its independent course in East Asia,” &VSPQFT
8PSME, 29 January 2014. “The United States is disappointed that Japan’s leadership has taken an action that will exacerbate tensions with Japan’s neighbors.” (“Statement on Prime Minister Abe’s 26 December Visit to Yasukuni shrine,” https://jp.usembassy.gov/statementprime-minister-abes-december-26-visit-yasukuni-shrine/) Emma Chanlett-Avery, et al., “Japan–US Relations: Issues for Congress,” Congressional Research Service, 20 February 2014.

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Abe’s adviser, Eto Seiichi, issued a sharp riposte to the high-level Washington criticism,, saying, “We are disappointed with the United States for saying it was disappointed….Why doesn’t the United States take better care of its ally Japan?”98 Thus rebuked and warned, Abe abstained from any further visit to Yasukuni,99 although making regular visits thereafter to Ise Grand Shrine and in May 2016 even bringing world leaders with him to participate in Shinto rituals following the G7 Summit he convened at Ise-Shima. Meanwhile, however, his close cabinet colleagues continued to worship at Yasukuni,100 and (as noted above) more than half of all members of the National Diet belonged to the “Let us all go together to worship at Yasukuni” Association. For his own part, following his much criticized 2013 Yasukuni visit, Abe seems to have adjusted his priorities so as to avoid further friction with Washington. He refrained not only from Yasukuni but from contentious statements on the Comfort Women or the Nanjing massacre. The unease felt in Washington over Tokyo’s unexpected cabinet of Yasaukuni devotees and war responsibility denialists was ameliorated by the resolve shown by the Abe government to meet US expectations for alliance cooperation, combining support for the continuing US military presence with steady growth in Japan’s “own” forces and widening of the scope of their activities. While striving not to offend, he would do his best to please by taking every possible step to reinforce Japan’s military incorporation in the 21st century Pax Americana project. He announced that his Japan would be “even more actively engaged in collective security measures, including peacekeeping operations.”101 His government’s defense and foreign ministers met their American counterparts in the Japan-US Security Consultative Committee in Tokyo in October 2013 to declare – with no apparent sense of incongruity – the next 98

99

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“Strains in Japan–US ties due to Abe and his close aides,” Asahi shimbun, 20 February 2014. He did, however substitute Ise Shrine, also intimately connected with the imperial institution, for Yasukuni, “‘Ajia ya sekai ni koken’, Abe shusho, sengo 70 nen danwa ni,” Asahi shimbun, 6 June 2015. “Three cabinet members visit Yasukuni Shrine after Abe meets Xi,” Japan Times, 23 April 2015. Address by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, at The Sixty-Eighth Session of The General Assembly of The United Nations, 26 September 2013, Sori Kantei [Prime Minister’s Department], “Speeches and statements by the Prime Minister.” http:// japan.kantei.go.jp/96_abe/statement/201309/index.html/

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phase of the Japanese partnership with the world’s global military giant.102 His government proceeded to set up a “National Security Council” on US lines, centralizing and removing the exercise of war powers from parliamentary scrutiny,103 to drop the ban on weapons export (2014), and to proceed with the construction of facilities for the Marine Corps on Okinawa, Guam and the Marianas, and for the SDF throughout the Southwest Islands (between Okinawa Island and Taiwan). To this overall agenda he attached the label “positive pacifism.” To address the problem of the constitutional ban on participation in “collective security” (US-led) coalitions of the willing, in August 2013 Abe nominated Komatsu Ichiro, ambassador to France, to head the Cabinet Legislative Bureau. At one level it was a simple administrative step, but it was replete with constitutional significance since Komatsu, not a constitutional expert, was known to share Abe’s interpretation of Article 9 according to which “collective security” operations could be legitimate under the principle of “collective self-defense.” In July 2014, Abe’s cabinet proceeded to adopt a re-interpretation of Article 9 in accordance with that view. The right of “collective self-defense,” hitherto understood by all governments to forbid any combat role alongside its US “ally,” would constrain it no longer. Virtually at a stroke, he thus scrapped the long-standing view of the constitution and freed Japan’s “Self Defense Forces” for global missions alongside US forces.104 In the summer of the following year, 2015, Abe adopted a package of security bills based on the new interpretation, freeing Japan’s Self Defense Forces for global missions alongside US forces.105 In effect Abe 102

103

104

105

“Joint Statement of the Security Consultative Committee,” 3 October 2013, http://www.mod.go.jp/e/d_act/us/JointStatement2013.pdf/ Taoka Shunji,”Nihon ban NSC sosetsu no gu,” Shukan kinyobi, 24 May 2013, p. 41. Article 51 of the UN Charter confers on states a temporary (pending authorization by the Security Council) “inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if subject to armed attack.” Abe has been keen to use this as loophole to allow the dispatch of Self Defense Force (currently restricted to territorial defense of Japan) to the aid of the US in future “Vietnam,” “Afghanistan,” or “Iraq” cases. Article 51 of the UN Charter confers on states a temporary (pending authorization by the Security Council) “inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if subject to armed attack.” Abe has been keen to use this as a loophole to allow the dispatch of Self Defense Force (currently restricted to territorial defense of Japan or to non-combat, support missions in the Afghan and Iraq wars) for shoulder-toshoulder involvement in future wars.

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had revised the constitution by simply re-interpreting it.106 Three constitutional specialists called by government to testify before the Diet stated, to the government’s consternation, that it was unconstitutional, and almost 200 more issued a statement to the same effect.107 Under the sobriquet of “positive pacifism,” they and many others feared that Japan’s constitutional “peace state” was morphing into a war state, at least a war capable one. His security commitments undoubtedly pleased Washington. The coldness of the previous two years and the “disappointment” with him over his Yasukuni attachment dissolved. Abe was granted a full-scale Washington welcome and, as state guest, he addressed a joint sitting of the two Houses of Congress, paid his respects at the Lincoln Memorial, enjoyed dinner and a press conference with the president. In his speech to Congress, Abe referred to the “shared values” of democracy, the rule of law and human rights, expressed his “remorse” for the pain and suffering, and his “eternal condolences to the souls of all American people” lost in the war, announced that he would honor the statements of war apology issued by his predecessors in 1993 and 1995 (which he had spent so much political capital over twenty years either doubting or attacking),108 promised to “fortify the US-Japan alliance” and to support the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) project – assumed at that time to be a core US national policy. Overall, he pledged Japan’s “proactive contribution to peace based on the principle of international cooperation.” Observing appreciatively Abe’s Washington performances, Senator John McCain, chair of the US Armed Services Committee, anticipated dispatch of the Self Defense Forces under the aegis of “positive pacifism,” to Korea, the Middle East, and the South China Sea.109 The “proactive” contribution to peace that Abe was promising would make smooth the path to participation in future wars. Abe was widely acclaimed for his bold and positive words designed to carry the bilateral relationship 106

107

108

109

Minamino Shigeru, “Shudanteki jieiken to naikaku hoseikyoku,” Sekai, October 2013, 20–24. Lawrence Repeta, “Japan’s Proposed National Security Legislation – Will This be the end of Article 9?” The Asia-Pacific Journal, 22 June 2015, http://apjjf.org/ Lawrence-Repeta/4335.html/ For the Abe speech to Congress, see http://japan.kantei.go.jp/97_abe/ statement/201504/uscongress.html/ Kyodo, “McCain: SDF should expect to see action in Korea, deploy to Mideast, South China Sea,” Japan Times, 2 May 2015.

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first articulated at San Francisco forward to a new level. The bilateral relationship was acclaimed as an “alliance of hope” and declared by Joseph Nye, “Japan handler” par excellence (on whom see more below), to be in “the best condition in decades.”110 In short, “positive pacifism” became the approved substitute for constitutional pacifism. And yet there was a line Japan had still not crossed. While joint US-Japan military exercises and training became the norm, and Abe’s efforts to proffer Japan’s 248,000-strong military for US service were understood and appreciated in Washington, over the seven and more decades since Japan surrendered and abandoned its “Coprosperity” project for Asian hegemony in 1945, no Japanese blood had been shed or spilled in military action. For that “deficiency” to be remedied and for Japan to become a “normal” state that can fight and kill, it must be able to order its soldiers to kill, and be ready to be killed. To clear the path to make that possible, formal revision of the consitution was necessary. In May 2017, Abe set a 2020 target date for accomplishing that. ABE 3: 2017–2018

The victory of Donald Trump in the US presidential election in November 2016 shocked Japan. Trump was not known to be close to Abe’s Washington associates, and during his campaign Trump had been notably “cool” towards Japan, accusing it of free-loading under the US nuclear umbrella, referring to its “unfair trade practices” and “inadequate” payments to support the US base presence.” He also declared opposition to the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, a cause to which, though initially reluctant, Abe had become a passionate advocate. At the height of the 2016 US presidential election campaign, on 20 September, Abe met in New York with the Democratic Party’s candidate, Hillary Clinton. Expecting her to win, he secured her endorsement of his view of the Japan-US relationship and paid little attention to Trump. Taken aback by the Trump victory, therefore, Abe led his government in boldly embracing Trump. Just one week after the election, he became the first foreign dignitary to call upon Trump in New York Trump Tower.111 Abe’s comment that he had found Trump to be 110 111

Joseph Nye, “The fate of Abe’s Japan,” Project Syndicate, 2 November 2015. Ayako Mie, “Trump and his policy in Asia remain an unknown for Japan,” Japan Times, 9 November 2016.

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“trustworthy” stood out among the overwhelmingly negative global response to the inauguration of the Trump era. No record was published of the talks, but it can be assumed that Abe made or intended to make the same points on Japan-US relations that he had made in his meetings two months earlier with Hillary Clinton, stressing in particular close strategic and military coordination and reinforcement of the Japan-US relationship “in the context of increasingly severe security environment in the Asia-Pacific.”112 He likely alluded to the efforts his government had been making towards militarization of the Frontier or Southwest Islands stretching deep into the East China Sea, potentially cutting off Chinese Navy access to the Pacific Ocean, and to its ongoing efforts to evade or neutralize Japan’s constitutional constraint so as to ensure that in future regional or global conflicts Japanese forces could fight shoulder-to-shoulder with their American counterparts. He could reasonably have assumed that such steps would please Trump. He may also have wanted to dispute Trump’s “freeloader” charge by reassuring him that Japan would continue to pay its protection money, and even substantially increase those payments. Where the common reaction around the world to the Trump presidency was one of fear and revulsion at the rise of an anti-democratic demagogue, Abe, and Japan in general, appeared to welcome the new American regime.113 When the two met a second time, on Abe’s formal state visit in February 2017, the warmth was palpable. Trump greeted his guest like the most intimate of friends, engaging him in a 19 second-long embrace and hand clasp on arrival, and over the days that folloowed the two shared several lunches and dinners, 27 holes of golf, a visit to Arlington Cemetery, and time in Air Force One, in all over 60-plus hours of togetherness. The weekend visit to Florida Mar-a-Lago Trump resort confirmed the remarkable status of Japan as the sole world leader not to take issue 112

113

“Abe shusho, Kurinton-shi to kaidan, Nichibei domei kyoko nado kakunin,” Asahi Shimbun, 20 September 2016. Le Monde Diplomatique editorialized about the incoming president as “a billionaire of dubious character who has not paid taxes for 20 years, who lies through his teeth and flirts openly with racism, xenophobia and sexism,” whose rise was “an earthquake, game changer for Western democracy.” (Jerome Fenoglio, “With Donald Trump’s victory, anger has triumphed,” Le Monde Diplomatique, 9 November 2016. http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2016/11/09/le-mondes-editorial-in-english/). The cover of the German magazine, Der Spiegel (12 November) featured an image of Trump as a world-destroying meteor.

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with Trump’s discriminatory and protectionist policies. In advance of the meeting, Cabinet in Tokyo had rushed through approval of a five-point package for Abe to carry in his furoshiki. By formulating projected Japan-US cooperation as one designed to provide jobs for 700,000 Americans, Abe could be sure he would grab Trump’s attention.114 The “Japan-American Growth and Employment Initiative” centered on a 10-year, 51 trillion yen ($450 billion) investment plan. It would comprise 17 trillion yen for renewal of US infrastructure (including high-speed rail (shinkansen) projects in Texas and California, with potential also for the key national route between Boston/New York and Washington DC),115 22 trillion yen for global infrastructural projects including joint development of civil aircraft and cooperation in sales of nuclear generation plants, 6 trillion yen for cooperation on artificial intelligence and robotics (including research and development in the nuclear, medical, and vehicle automation sectors), and 6 trillion yen in cooperation in cyber and space industries.116 Furthermore, part of the Japanese commitment to the grand design would come from the retirement fund of the Japanese people, the Global Pension Investment Fund (GPIF), the world’s largest repository of funds. Even five percent of the GPIF’s 130 trillion yen fund would amount to 6 trillion yen. In the event, however, this grand agenda was not actually submitted to Trump.117 The February meeting was essentially celebratory: mood prevailing over subtance. The two sent more time on the golf course than at the conference table and their formal summit conference lasted a scant 40 minutes (half, once allowance is made for interpreting). The “Alliance” itself was the message and the detailed Japanese proposals were left to a later occasion. The Japanese people could only wait to see what price their country would be expected to pay in return for the extravagant reception accorded Abe. The vainglorious president was presumably delighted to have the leader of this major state with immense wealth and technical expertise thus has114 115 116

117

“Bei de 70 man nin koyo soshutsu,” Asahi Shimbun, 3 February 2017. “Shinkansen, Bei o hashiru ka,” Chunichi shimbun, 18 November 2016 On the 2 February cabinet meeting, “Bei ni 70 man nin koyo o teian e, shusho, toshi de 50 cho-en shijo e,” Tokyo shimbun, 3 February 2017. http://www.tokyo-np. co.jp/article/economics/list/201702/ck2017020302000121.html/ Also “‘Nichibei Keizai taiwa’ Amerika iinari Nihon ni kiken,” Akahata, 14 February 2017, http:// www.jcp.or.jp/akahata/aik16/2017-02-14/2017021401_05_1.html/ ”Kyokyo jitsujitsu... kieta ‘koyo kokensaku’,” Nihon Keizai Shimbun, 14 February 2017

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tening to pledge fealty and displaying such effusiveness and submissiveness. Abe’s promises of, a “strengthened” alliance, deeper military ties and closer integration of Japanese Self-Defense Forces within US regional and global strategy must have sounded to Trump almost too good to be true. For the Trump team, facing the conundrum of how to reconcile their policy objectives of massive tax cuts with greatly increased infrastructure and military spending, Abe offer of a generous Japanese contribution and of access to the Japanese people’s savings was especially welcome. The 51 trillion yen scheme may have been shelved, but prodigious sums would undoubtedly be called for in the ensuing negotiations. Soon after the meeting with Abe, Trump made clear something that was surely obvious: his government would have no problem with bases for US forces in Japan being constructed and paid for by Japan (at Henoko and Takae in Okinawa).118 And Japan would have to pay more to support the troops that would operate them.119 For Abe, the closeness and personal warmth was politically rewarding. His support figures rose by almost 7 points to above 60 per cent during the month of November on the occasion of his first visit.120 His February 2017 visit was greeted positively by 68 per cent according to an NHK poll and 70 per cent according to Kyodo.121 Yet only 21 per cent of people believed an “equal” relationship was possible with the United States.122 In other words, a majority of Japanese people took it for granted that the overwhelmingly important relationship could only be one of superior/subordinate. It seemed not to matter that “alliance” to an America whose new leader had declared to the world that “From this day forward, it’s going to be only America First, America First”123 was fundamentally unequal and even humiliating. The major national media celebrated precisely the confirmation of Japan’s status as number one “client state” and called in something like unison for 118 119

120

121

122

123

Heianna, op. cit. “Trump rips US defense of Japan as one-sided, too expensive,” Japan Times, 6 August 2016. Other factors of course also played a role, including the meeting with Putin in Peru on 19 November which fed hopes of a solution to the territorial dispute with Russia. Eric Johnston, “Abe walks a fine line between Trump and Asia,” Japan Times, 18 February 2017. Mainichi Shimbun survey, reported in “Taito ni kosho dekiru, 21%,” Ryukyu shimbun, 20 February 2017. “Inaugural Address,” CNN, 10 January 2017. http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/20/ politics/trump-inaugural-address/ Trump Inaugural address.

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that status to be maintened and if possible strengthened. 124 There was a sigh of almost audible national relief as Abe secured from the president (via his Defense Secretary Mattis), confirmation of the long-established Obama era policies on North Korea and China, including the pledge that Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State had given to back Japan’s claim to the Senkaku/Diaoyu islets in the East China Sea. It is aso the case that Trump’s racist and discriminatory principles were less controversial in Japan than elsewhere in part because many, perhaps most, in Japan basically agreed with them. One survey found 69 per cent of people in Japan agreeing that border admission should be strictly controlled and only 15 per cent favoring leniency desirable towards asylum seekers. In 2016, continuing a well-established pattern, precisely 28 asylum seekers were admitted to Japan in this way, fewest by far of the advanced industrial countries.125 Trump can only have envied Japan’s protective ocean setting, making walls unnecessary.

124

125

For Japanese media and public response to the Trump election, Kihara Satoru, “Toranpu shori (ge) Nihon o ou ‘Nichibei gunji domei’ tabu,” Ari no hitokoto, 14 November 2016. http://blog.goo.ne.jp/satoru-kihara/d/20161114/ Mainichi Shimbun survey, cited above.

Chapter Two

The Client State ™

The condition of Japan, happy to have parts of its territory under military occupation by a protector, anxious to satisfy that state’s demands across multiple policy areas, and determined at all costs to avoid offending it, is the phenomenon for which in 2007 I began to use the term “client state.”1 It is a term I apply to the US-Japan relationship, but is applicable likewise to other US relationships because the truth is that the US does not admit of “equality” in its relations with any state, and that “allies” tend to be appreciated for their servility even if it means becoming known in their own countries as “poodles.” Thus the phenomenon of the zokkoku, the dependent, servile or “Client State” syndrome. The “client state” is characterized by the fact that submission is deliberately chosen and formal sovereignty is not in question. Independence and democratic responsibility are combined with deliberately chosen submission, such that the relationship is to be described only by oxymoronic terms such as “dependent independence” or “servile sovereignty.”2 I propose a definition of “Client State” that distinguishes it from other, forms of colonial, conquered, directly dominated, or neo-colonial territory as: “A state that enjoys the formal trappings of Westphalian sovereignty and independence, and is therefore neither a colony nor a puppet state, but 1

2

Gavan McCormack, Client State: Japan in the American Embrace, London and New York, Verso, 2007, see also: “Japan’s Client State (Zokkoku) Problem,” The AsiaPacific Journal: Japan Focus, 24 June 2013. Nishitani Osamu, “Jihatsuteki reiju o koeyo – jiritsuteki seiji e no ippo,” Sekai, February 2010, p. 126. 45

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which has internalized the requirement to give preference to ‘other’ interests over its own.”3

Such a state pays meticulous attention to adopting and pursuing policies that will satisfy its patron, and readily pays whatever price necessary to be sure that the patron not abandon it. As one scholar puts it, “‘servitude’ is no longer just a necessary means but is happily embraced and borne.4 ‘Spontaneous freedom’ becomes indistinguishable from ‘spontaneous servitude’.” At that time, my term “Client State” (in Japanese Zokkoku) was a shocking deviation from mainstream Western and academic writing, although I had in fact borrowed the term from former Chief Cabinet Secretary Gotoda Masaharu, a pillar of conservatism. It still seemed shocking because it touched a taboo about the origin and character of the state system.5 It was grim satisfaction, five years on, to find my thesis confirmed in a best-seller by a senior figure from the Japanese bureaucratic establishment, Magosaki Ukeru, former head of the Intelligence and Analysis Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Magosaki wrote of post-war history as a contest between lines, one “autonomous” (jishu), and the other “servile” (tsuiju).6 The proponents of the “autonomous” line: Demand the return of US military bases or their drastic reduction; Object to payment of the “host nation support” subsidies for the US forces; Aspire to tie Japan’s foreign policy to the United Nations and to disarmament causes; Are reluctant to be involved in war, from Korea in 1950 to Vietnam in the 1960s and Afghanistan and Iraq later; Call for equidistant diplomacy with China and for engagement in construction of an Asian or East Asian community.

Adherents of the “servile” line: 3

4 5 6

For this definition’s first use, see the revised Japanese, Korean, and Chinese editions of Client State: Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing, 2008. Nishitani, op. cit. “Gotoda Masaharu moto fukusori intabyu,” Asahi shimbun, 21 September 2004. Magosaki Ukeru, Sengoshi no shotai, 1945–2012, Tokyo: Sogensha, 2012); Magosaki Ukeru, Amerika ni tsubusareta seijikatachi, (Tokyo: Shogakukan, 2012).

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See the “alliance” as the charter of the state (with de facto priority over the constitution); Insist on the importance of the US base presence in Japan, especially Okinawa; Defend the host nation” subsidy system; Favor cither constitutional revision or revision of its interpretation (so as to allow “collective security” and possession and exercise of “normal” military power).

No less than eight “autonomous”-inclining post-war Prime Ministers, most recently Hatoyama Yukio in 2009–2010, had been, according to Magosaki, eliminated on instructions or under direction from Washington, while “servile” governments – Magosaki includes Yoshida Shigeru (1948–1954), Ikeda Hayato (1960–1964), Nakasone Yasuhiro (1982–1987), and Koizumi Junichiro (2001–2006), to which undoubtedly would now have to be added Abe himself (2006–2007, 2012-) – tended to last longer, thrive, be acclaimed in Washington as well as Tokyo, and have a greater impact on the body politic.7 It means, paradoxically, that supposedly “nationalist” Prime Ministers are actually the most “servile.” Save for the brief and ill-fated Hatoyama Yukio attempt (2009–2010, discussed below) to break free of it, the servile line was followed by government after government and by national and opinion leaders. Ono Katsumi, (Vice Minister in 1957–1958) wrote ruefully of the evolution of consensus within Japan’s ruling circles, “In Japan’s foreign policy, based since the end of the war on following the wishes of the occupying forces, i.e. the Americans, the idea took root that it would be enough to concentrate on the economy, which presented enough difficulties, and to leave everything else to the Americans, so that the spirit of autonomy and independence was lost.”8

The Abe administration’s nationalist facade is contradicted by the substance of its subservience to the US,9 and the “nationalism” that Abe performs is an “air nationalism,” plucked on the strings of an imaginary 7 8

9

Magosaki Ukeru, Sengoshi no shotai, 2012. Ono Katsumi, Kasumigaseki gaiko – sono dento to hitobito, Nihon keizai shimbunsha, 1978, quoted in Magosaki’s March 2010 lecture to the America-Japan Society. Gavan McCormack, Client State: Japan in the American Embrace, London and New York, Verso, 2007. See also: “Japan’s Client State (Zokkoku) Problem,” The AsiaPacific Journal – Japan Focus, 24 June 2013.

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guitar.10 The sovereignty returned to Japan in 1952 entrenched US control and fleshed out the oxymoronic formula of “dependent independence” or “servile sovereignty.”11 The unequal relationship has been repeatedly confirmed and reinforced since then. Other states too are obsequious to the US super-power, but Japan is unique in having a state structure actually created by it and marked by military bases the length and breadth of the land. POODLE POWERS

Client states, tied vertically to their “patron,” are structurally incapable of dissent. They embrace, as a matter of course, their patron’s cause, even if it involves abuses of international law or the commission of criminal acts (such as aggression, war, torture). They tend to evade responsibility for the consequences of their support for the US, though these consequences can be terrible (for Koreans and later for Vietnamese in the 20th century, or for Afghans, Iraqis, Syrians, Libyans and others in the 21st century). They thus help sustain a vertically framed global order incompatible with universal principles. The essence of the “client state” relationship is captured by terms such as “poodle syndrome” (adopted in the United Kingdom to apply to the government of Tony Blair, Pime Minister 1997–2007), “deputy sheriff” (applied to the Australian government of John Howard, Prime Minster, 1996–2007) and “Serjeant-Major” (George W. Bush’s term to refer to Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro, Prime Minister 2001–2006). The three countries provided invaluable support for the US, helping legitimize its many wars, all three inclining to believe that the US military is the source and guarantor of freedom and source of the “oxygen” that ensures peace and security to large sections of the world. As Brent Scowcroft, the former national security adviser to the Gerald Ford and George H. Bush administrations put it with reference to the US invasion of Iraq: “I don’t think the President would have done it absolutely alone. He needed some cover, and you [i.e. Australia] and the British gave it to him.”12 10

11

12

Nakano Koichi, “‘Neoribe jidai no ea nashonarizumu’ saraba dokusaisha, kensho, boso suru Abe seiken,” Shukan kinyobi, 17 April 2014, pp. 10–14. Nishitani Osamu, “Jihatsuteki reiju o koeyo – jiritsuteki seiji e no ippo,” Sekai, February 2010, pp. 135–136. Quoted in Peter Hartcher, “America’s choice, our future,” Sydney Morning Herald, 8 February 2008.

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It follows from that that client states, whatever their motivation, share responsibility for the consequences of the acts in which they collude, including illegal and aggressive wars. Where both Great Britain and Australia have generated notable dissent and criticism for their complicity in these wars, however, self-reflective and cricial comment has been minimal in Japan. In Great Britain, the one million word [Sir John] Chilcot Report into Great Britain’s role in Iraq between 2001 and 2009, tabled in 2016, found: “that Saddam Hussein did not pose an urgent threat to British interests, that intelligence regarding weapons of mass destruction was presented with unwarranted certainty, that peaceful alternatives to war had not been exhausted, that the United Kingdom and United States had undermined the authority of the United Nations Security Council, that the process of identifying the legal basis was ‘far from satisfactory,’ and that a war in 2003 was unnecessary.”13

The implication is that Tony Blair conspired in and executed an unprovoked war of aggression against a defenseless country, whose cost is now reliably estimated as including the death of more than a million people, the flight of another four million and the suffering of countless others, including a generation of children, from malnutrition, trauma, and the poisons introduced to their environment by banned weapons such as those using depleted uranium.14 In July 2010 Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, formally stated in the House of Commons that the invasion of Iraq had indeed been illegal. Australia has not followed the “Inquiry” path, but no fewer than three former Prime Ministers have recently issued sharp warnings to their country on what they saw as a steepening path downwards into servility: Malcolm Fraser, conservative Prime Minister between 1975 and 1978, referred to the “past twenty years,” in which: “We seem more and more than ever to be locked into the United States’ purposes and objectives. … Unconditional support diminishes our influence throughout East and South-East Asia. It limits our capacity to act as 13

14

“The Iraq Inquiry,” London, 6 July 2016, http://Iraqinquiry.org.uk. Resume here taken from the Wikipedia entry. 1.9 tons of depleted uranium were used in Iraq by British forces, according to Defense Secretary Liam Fox in July 2010.

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an independent and confident nation. It limits our influence on the United States herself.”15

Paul Keating, Labour Prime Minister between 1991 and 1996, was if anything more forthright: ‘’Our sense of independence has flagged, and as it flagged we have rolled back into an easy accommodation with the foreign policy objectives of the United States … More latterly, our respect for the foreign policy objectives of the United States has superimposed itself on what should otherwise be the foreign policy objectives of Australia.’’16

Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister between 2007 and 2010, although a China scholar and Chinese speaker known for his hawkish views on China, nevertheless called in 2012 for a cooperative, multilateral Pax Pacifica to replace the current Pax Americana (or any possible Pax Sinica) as the security frame for the coming era.17 There is no precedent or parallel in Japan for the British Chilcot Inquiry or the Australian high-level warnings about the client state path, the responsibility that accrues from it and the dangers that follow from it. It may be that servility and self-abnegation are more deeply rooted in Japan than in Great Britain or Australia, perhaps because, uniquely, today’s Japanese state was actually created by the United States during the decade that folowed the Japanese collapse of 1945. SERVILITY

So firmly rooted has the Zokkoku quality of the Japanese state become that at each time when Japan might have taken the opportunity to try to increase its autonomy and its independence, it chose instead to do the opposite. This was the case in 1959–1960, 1969–1972, 1990–1994, and 2009–2011. Since the end of the Cold War, military preparations 15

16

17

Malcolm Fraser: 2012 Gough Whitlam Oration, 6 June 2012, “Politics, Independence and the National Interest: the legacy of power and how to achieve a peaceful Western Pacific.” Paul Keating, quoted in Mark Baker, “US alliance comes at cost of regional status – Keating,” Sydney Morning Herald, 15 November 2012.  Kevin Rudd, “Principles of Pax Pacifica – Building the East Asia Security Order,” Shangri La Hotel, Singapore, 21 September 2012. 

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and cooperation were steadily stepped up and the frame widened from bilateral and regional (“the Far East”) to the world. As the Japanese economic accomplishment seemed by the 1980s to be brilliantly successful, setting the country on an apparently ever victorious march towards global supremacy, the “Japan as Number One” era, the US government stepped up pressure to seek a greater contribution in military and strategic terms and neutralize and incorporate its economic thrust under US control. In Japan, by contrast, the Cold War suddenly over and the LDP lapsing in 1993 from power, a window of possibility opened. The Hosokawa Morihiro government commissioned a report into Japan’s desirable post-Cold War posture which in due course recommended a re-negotiation of the US relationship (and therefore of the San Francisco Treaty) and greatly enhanced Japanese autonomy. The report, authored by Asahi Beer’s Higuchi Yotaro, noted the slow decline of US hegemonic power and recommended Japan adopt a more autonomous, multilateral, and UN-centered diplomacy.18 Alarmed, Bill Clinton’s government commissioned a response. The outcme was the “United States Security Strategy for the East Asia Pacific Region” or “East Asia Strategic Report.” Commonly known as the “Nye Report,” after its principal author, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., former assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, it set the parameters that governed – and indeed continue to govern – US-Japan (and Asia) policy to this day. 19 The core recommendation, diametrially opposed to that of the Higuchi Report, was that Japan and South Korea should be tied even closer to American designs and 100,000 US troops should remain stationed on their soil to that end. That basic strategic policy principle was periodically restated thereafter, in 2000, 2007, and 2012, by the group of scholar-bureaucrats of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think-tank in Washington.20 18

19

20

Boei mondai kondankai, “Nihon no anzen hosho to boeiryoku no arikata – 21 seiki e mukete no tenbo (The Modality of the Security and Defense Capability of Japan – The Outlook for the 21st Century), Higuchi ripoto, 12 August 1994, http:// worldjpn.grips.ac.jp/documents/texts/JPSC/19940812.O1J.html/ Department of Defense, “United States Security Strategy for the East Asia Pacific Region,” February 1995 (commonly the “Nye Report” after Joseph S. Nye, Jr. its lead author. The three reports from the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), in 2000, 2007 and 2012, entitled, respectively “The US and Japan: Advancing towards a Mature Partnership”; “The US-Japan Alliance: Getting Asia Right through 2020”; and “The US-Japan Alliance: Anchoring Stability in Asia.”

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These experts, prescribing and occasionally managing the US-Japan relationship, came to be referred to as the “Japan handlers.”21 They were heirs to the “Japan Crowd” of early post-war bureaucrats, journalists, and policy makers closely connected to the CIA and US military and cultivated by Emperor Hirohito.22 Under the over-arching principle of US military-political dominane, ever since the Nye Report of 1995 “Japan handlers” in the US have been demanding Japan set aside “anachronistic restraints” (referring to its abhorrence for “the threat or use of force” and its pledge to the international community to pacifism under Article 9) and clear the way to merger of Japanese and US forces and shared missions in the East and South China Seas and as far as to the Persian Gulf or the Indian or Pacific oceans.23 In April 2012, President Obama and Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko issued a joint statement about the US-Japan “alliance” being “the cornerstone of peace, security, and stability in the Asia-Pacific region,”24 in accordance with which the two sides pledged “to further enhance our bilateral security and defense cooperation,” which meant Japan developing its “dynamic” defense force under the National Defense Program Guidelines (2010 and 2014) “to achieve a more geographically distributed and operationally resilient force posture in the region.” Japan would build the bases it had promised, step up the absorption of its forces under integrated US direction, confront China militarily by expanding those forces into the Southwestern Islands, and cooperate with the US in “the high seas, space, and cyber-space.” It was taken for granted that it faced “serious and imminent threat,” that the key to its defense was “extended deterrence” (US nuclear weapons), and that it must continue to “promote the realignment of US Forces Japan” and to build “capacity to respond to any attack on remote islands,” to which 21

22

23 24

McCormack and Norimatsu, p. 64. See also Magosaki Ukeru, Nichibei domei no shotai, meiso suru anzen hosho, (Tokyo: Kodansha gendai shinsho, 2009) pp. 107– 110. For details on this, see Toyoshita, Showa tenno, op. cit, also Howard B. Schonberger, "GUFSNBUI
PG
8BS
"NFSJDBOT
BOE
UIF
3FNBLJOH
PG
+BQBO
–1952, Kent, Ohio, Kent State University Press, 1989. Richard Armitage and Joseph S. Nye, op. cit., August 2012. “United States-Japan Joint Statement: A Shared Vision for the Future,” White House, Office of the Press Secretary, 30 April 2012. http://www.whitehouse.gov/ the-press-office/2012/04/30/united-states-japan-joint-statement-shared-visionfuture/

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end it would set up three new rapid deployment divisions and four new rapid deployment brigades and an amphibious rapid deployment brigade [modelled on the US Marine Corps].25 The momentum of miltary buildup has only gathered force under the Abe government since 2012. The Nye-CSIS principles constitute the bedrock of the Japanese state, dictating “boots on the ground” in Iraq and “showing the flag” and Japanese naval missions to the Indian Ocean in the burgeoning Middle East conflict, comprehensive diplomatic and financial support for US wars, “containment” of China, reinforcement of US bases and the militarization of Okinawa’s frontier south-western islands. The understanding naturally includes Japanese purchase of US weapons and missile defense systems and the provision of major military base facilities for the US throughout Japan, and especially in Okinawa. While the US patron thus pressed Japan to make the relationship into a “mature” alliance, it also insisted on economic “reforms” designed to facilitate US interests. As part of the market-opening pressures, under what was called the “Structural Impediments Initiative” between 1989 and 1993 and the annual statement of “Reform Desiderata” (nenji kaikaku yobosho), from 1994 to 2008, “Japan was called upon to take steps to “expand the domestic market” (naiju kakudai) and to adopt comprehensive neo-liberal reforms by way of deregulation, privatization, and structural reform. Murata Ryohei, Japanese ambassador in Washington between 1989 and 1992, commented later that during his term of office the point of the structural impediment initiative was to press Japan for “system change” on behalf of US banks and insurance businesses, and to facilitate M and A access to Japan’s finance sector.26 Japan tended to accept the US demands in a “clientelist spirit” (zokkoku konjo).27 The annual “Desiderata” was suspended under Hatoyama Yukio in 2009, but resumed with a slightly different name, as “Japan-US Economic Harmonizing Initiative,” under his successors from 2011.28 Thereafter, as Japan under Abe embraced the Trans Pacific Partnership 25

26 27

28

Ministry of Defense, “National Defense Program Guidelines for FY2014 and beyond,” provisional translation, 17 December 2013, http://www.mod.go.jp/j/ approach/agenda/guideline/2014/pdf/20131217_e2.pdf/ Murata Ryohei, Doko e iku no ka, kono kuni wa (Kyoto: Minerva, 2010), p. 161. Murata, ibid., p. 161. (In a 42-year long career in the Japanese Foreign Ministry, Murata was at various times ambassador to Australia, the US, and Germany, and Administrative Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs.) “Nichibei keizai chowa taiwa” (Japan-US Economic Harmonizing Dialogue), Embassy of the United States, Tokyo, February 2011.

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(TPP) formula, formally joining the group in July 2013, negotiations on trade and other issues were subsumed under that frame (till President Trump withdrew the US from them upon assuming the presidency in January 2017). The early 21st century Koizumi Junichiro’s prime ministership (2001–2006), coinciding for much of the time with the presidency of George W. Bush (2001–2009), came to be seen as the “golden years” of the alliance because of Koizumi’s enthusiastic embrace of the neoliberal agenda. Postal privatisation (promoted in a highly successful electoral campaign by Koizumi in 2005) was a high-point, but it was accompanied by ongoing demands for “opening” of other Japanese markets in finance, insurance, health services and pharmaceuticals. Koizumi was much appreciated for the effort he put into implementing the US agenda, and was rewarded as his term of office approached its end in 2006 with a presidentially-guided visit to the Elvis Presley shrine at Graceland. As Moriya Takemasa (Vice Minister for Defense, 2002–2006) later remarked, “it is called an alliance, but in practice the US side just decides things unilaterally.”29 The “best” years of the alliance were those of greatest Japanese servility. Today’s Abe Shinzo may be seen as “the very epitome of slavish mentality.”30 CHALLENGING CLIENTELISM, 2005–2010

The Democratic Party (DPJ)’s 2005 Manifesto declared a commitment to “…do away with the dependent relationship in which Japan ultimately has no alternative but to act in accordance with US wishes, replacing it with a mature alliance based on independence and equality.” As the credibility of the LDP faded and the star of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan rose in 2008–2009, it was Joseph Nye who emerged at the heart of the Washington mobilization of pressure to neutralize the DPJ before and then after it took power. In December 2008, he spelled out the three acts that Congress would be inclined to see as “anti-American”: cancellation of the Maritime Self-Defense Agency’s Indian Ocean mission, and any attempt to revise the Status of Forces

29

30

http://japanese.japan.usembassy.gov/j/p/tpj-20110304-70.html (accessed 12 April 2012). Quoted in Sunohara Takeshi, Domei henbo – Nichibei ittaika no hikari to kage, Nihon Keizai shimbunsha, 2007, p. 64. Magosaki Ukeru, “Dorei konjo marudashi no Abe shusho,” [Prime Minister Abe the epitome of slave mentality] Twitter, 24 February 2013.

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Agreement or the agreements on relocating US Forces in Japan.31 The same basic message was repeated to the Democratic Party’s Maehara Seiji in the early days of the Obama administration. When Maehara sought to convey his party’s wishes to renegotiate these agreements, Nye warned that to do so would be seen as “anti-American.”32 The Nye frame of thinking, first formulated in 1995 and restated periodically thereafter, was predicated on two general principles: distrust of Japan and insistence that the US military occupation continue indefinitely. On 24 February 2009, Ozawa Ichiro, then the Democratic Party’s head, suggested that the US 7th Fleet, home ported at Yokosuka, should be adequate to any security purpose in the region and that other US bases, including notably those in Okinawa, were no longer necessary. To propose equalizing the US relationship and liquidating the bases was to reject servility and challenge Washington fundamentally. It was the clearest imaginable statement of a Japanese foreign and defense policy that would substitute a UN- and East Asia-center for the long-established US center. It was therefore intolerable. Just one week after his remarks, Ozawa was arrested on corruption charges and it was not till three and a half years later that he was fully cleared. The point of these long-drawn out proceedings was not so much innocence or guilt as removal of the DPJ’s most effective leader and rooting out of the “autonomous” faction in Japanese politics.33 Hatoyama Yukio, who took the reins from Ozawa and led the Democrats to electoral victory on 30 August 2009, shared Oawa’s geo-strategic vision and tapped a national mood of desire for change. He promised a clean break with LDP politics, taking back government from the bureaucrats and opening it to the people through their elected representatives. In particular, he would renegotiate the San Francisco Treaty relationship with the US on the basis of equality, reject “market fundamentalism” and re-orient Japan away from US-centered unipolarism towards a multipolar world in which Japan would be a central member of an East Asian community. He would promote local self-government, and (as a kind of concentrated expression in concrete form of all of the above) close (by moving somewhere outside Okinawa) the Futenma marine 31

32

33

Quoted in Narusawa Muneo, “Shin seiken no gaiko seisaku ga towareru Okinawa kichi mondai,” Shukan Kinyobi, 25 September 2009, pp. 13–15. Asahi shimbun, 25 February 2009. See also Maeda Tetsuo, “Juzoku” kara “jiritsu” e – Nichibei Ampo o kaeru, Kobunken, 2009, pp. 17, 25. Kimura Akira, “Kenryoku no boso to Amerika no katan – Ozawa mondai to mejia no katan – Ozawa mondai no imi o tou,” Doshisha University, 18 October 2012 (courtesy professor Kimura).

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base. Hatoyama described his core philosophical concept of Yuai as “...a strong, combative concept that is a banner of revolution,”34 using the word “revolution” in a way no Japanese Prime Minister had ever used it before. He opened the Diet session in January 2010 with the words: “I want to protect people’s lives. That is my wish: to protect people’s lives I want to protect the lives of those who are born; of those who grow up and mature…”

Such pronouncements disturbed Washington. To speak of “protecting life” must have seemed bizarre to those for whom readiness to take it was rather the mark of seriousness. Richard Armitage observed scathingly that the Democratic Party was “speaking a different language” and that he and his colleagues were “shocked by its platform,” and Joseph Nye referred to it as “inexperienced, divided and still in the thrall of campaign promises,” by which he meant that attempts to renegotiate the agreement on the Futenma replacement base plan would not be tolerated.35 Defense Secretary Robert Gates demanded Hatoyama’s submission, adding insult to ultimatum by refusing to attend a welcoming ceremony at the Defense Ministry or to dine with senior Japanese Defense officials. The 8BTIJOHUPO
1PTU described Hatoyama as “the biggest loser [among world leaders]…, hapless, increasingly loopy,” i.e. in effect, it was saying, Hatoyama was mad. His challenge to Japan’s status as “client state” demonstrated his madness. No other major ally – or, for that matter, no enemy either – had ever been subjected to the sort of advice, abuse and intimidation that Hatoyama, Japan’s Prime Minister, faced. The Hatoyama crisis coincided with revelations from Wikileaks and from domestic Japanese sources attesting to persistent lying, deception, secret deals, cover-up, and manipulation by governments in Japan in order to serve Washington. Servility was incompatible with democracy and therefore required deception, secrecy, and manipulation. Because Hatoyama’s stance threatened to untie the alliance knot, the bureaucrats of the Departments of Foreign Affairs and Defense launched a “rollback” 34

35

For detailed sources on the Hatoyama government see McCormack and Norimatsu, chapter 6. Joseph S. Nye Jr, “An Alliance larger than One Issue,” New York Times, 6 January 2010.

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operation to force his submission,36 refusing cooperation and instead conspiring to bring him down. Torn between the pressures of Washington on the one hand and Okinawa on the other which he lacked the courage or clarity to confront, Hatoyama’s political position crumbled. The national media blamed him for the deterioration in the country’s key relationship, insisting that he cease offending and irritating the US. Hatoyama was in effect betrayed and driven from office by his own ministerial staff. They maintained clandestine, even conspiratorial, liaison and cooperation with their Washington opposite numbers and called on the government of the US to stand firm and “refrain from demonstrating flexibility.” The more senior they were, the more likely they were to conceive of their fundamental loyalty as to the government of the United States rather than to him as Prime Minister. After the issue of a joint governmental statement confirming the Henoko transfer, and a cabinet decision formally endorsing it, he resigned. Hatoyama’s subsequent account was that officials in his Departments of Foreign Affairs and Defense had sabotaged his efforts to push for a Futenma replacement facility “at least somewhere outside Okinawa” and that he had had no effective means to resist them. Eight months later, however, he explained that the idea that the Marines were necessary for deterrence and there was no alternative to construction of a Futenma alternative at Henoko for them had been just a pretext (hoben), which his advisers had persuaded him to use to justify betrayal of his election pledge. Three years after the event, he apologized profusely for the pain and anger he had caused the Okinawan people by “my inability to act decisively, my lack of strategic sense, and my weakness of resolve” faced with the sabotage of ministers and advisers.37 The Hatoyama atempt to negotiate a path beyond clientelism thus failed miserably. For political scientist Shinohara Hajime, Hatoyama’s submission was a pivotal event in modern Japanese history, a surrender of sovereignty of such moment as to warrant being described as “Japan’s second defeat” (i.e. alongside that of 1945).38 Although Hatoyama himself bears responsibility for his confused and irresolute leadership, he stands out among Prime Ministers for at least having had a vision of 36

37 38

“Interview – Fukushima Mizuho zendaijin,” Shukan kinyobi, 18 June 2010, pp. 14–17. Hatoyama Yukio, “‘Hatoyama no ran’ Okinawa no o yonde,” op. cit. McCormack and Norimatsu, 130.

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a post-San Francisco treaty order and having made an attempt, however feeble, to renegotiate it. The lesson Hatoyama’s successors seem to have learned, however, was that “deepening” the alliance, i.e. making it more subservient and unequal, had to be their top priority. Thus, in his introductory policy speech to the Diet upon taking over the reins of government in contrast with the paean to life with which Hatoyama began his government, Kan Naoto promised the “steady deepening of the alliance relationship.” By that he meant he would do as required. He would restore the “servile line.” The national media agreed that Kan’s task was to heal the “wounds” that Hatoyama had caused to the alliance, and thus to restore Washington’s trust and confidence. What Magosaki refers to as the ascendancy of the servile line was thus resumed in what may also be seen as the “mature” Client State. The Hatoyama vacillation and surrender, however, had fundamentally altered one major element of the equation. It outraged and aroused Okinawa. The Okinawan people, unlike elite bureaucrats and vacillating politicians, have since continued to resist (see the following chapter). The fault lines of struggle for an autonomous national polity, for justice and democracy, bisect the prefecture. In December 2012, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington issued a specific challenge, asking was Japan ready to assume the responsibilities, especially military, of a tier-one status state, or did it wish to lapse into becoming “a tier-two country.”39 To respond positively would entail taking steps to “stand shoulder-toshoulder” with the US, sending naval groups to the Persian Gulf and the South China Sea, relaxing its restrictions on arms exports, increasing its defense budget and military personnel numbers, resuming its commitment to civil nuclear power, pressing ahead with construction of new base facilities in Okinawa, Guam, and the Mariana Islands, and revising either its constitution or the way it is interpreted so as to facilitate “collective security,” i.e. merging its forces with those of the US without inhibition in regional and global battlefields. Under the overarching principle of the “Air Sea Battle” doctrine, there would be much more “interoperability” – sharing training and base facilities – of 39

Richard Armitage and Joseph S. Nye, “The US-Japan Alliance: Anchoring Stability in Asia,” CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies), August 2012. This report, published months before the 2012 presidential election, laid out the position expected to be the kernel of East Asian policy for the incoming administration.

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Japanese and US forces (in Okinawa, Guam, the Marianas, and Darwin). It was taken for granted that Japan would purchase and deploy US weapons and defense systems,40 and that any thought of reducing the Japanese government’s subsidies to the Pentagon (roughly $7 billion per year) such as were briefly entertained in the early days of the Democratic Party government in 2009, would be set aside.41 If Japan balked at any of this, Washington intimated, it would simply slide into “tier two” status. That, clearly, would be beneath contempt. It was characteristic of the client state relationship that, despite their overweening attitude and assumption of the prerogative of dictating to Japan, Nye, Armitage, and other “handlers” of the relationship were respected, even revered, as “pro-Japanese” in Japan. Minister of Foreign Affairs Gemba expressed his profuse thanks for their interventions when greeting them in 2012, referring to “the advice proffered by Japan’s true friends.”42 Others saw it differently. One well-placed observer wrote of the “foul odor” he felt in the air around Washington and Tokyo given off by the activities of the “Japan-expert” and the “pro-Japan” Americans on one side and “slavish” “US-expert” and “pro-American” Japanese on the other, both “living off” the unequal relationship which they had helped construct and support.43 POSITIVE PACIFISM

In February 2013, undertaking his first visit to the United States since resuming office in December 2012, Abe responded to the challenge. Addressing his CSIS peers individually as “Rich [ard Armitage], John [Hamre], Mike [Green] and all my distinguished friends,” he declared, “Japan is not, and will never be, a Tier-two country.”44 Under his gov40

41

42 43

44

Kebin Mea (Kevin Maher), “Amerika to Kanada no kyokun,” Bungei shunju, October 2012, p. 169. Gavan McCormack and Satoko Oka Norimatsu, Resistant Islands: Okinawa confronts Japan and the United States, 2012, pp. 193–196. “Yiyo na kokei, Genba gaisho, Bei kara koto shimon?” Akahata, 28 October 2012. Terashima Jitsuro, quoted in McCormack and Norimatsu, pp. 69–70. Terashima refers to Japanese intellectuals by the term, “do-gan” (literally “slave face”, a term he invents based on his reading of a savagely satirical early 20th century Chinese story by Lu Xun). “‘Japan is back’ policy speech by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the Center for Strategic and International Studies,” Washington, 22 February 2013. http://www. kantei.go.jp/jp/96_abe/statement/2013/0223speech.html/ The official English text of that speech, and the address he gave himself in English to the Hudson Institute

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ernment it would make a “proactive contribution to peace.” That would entail becoming “even more actively engaged in collective security measures, including peacekeeping operations.” What he meant was that the reluctance to follow the Washington agenda shown under DPJ governments, notably that of Hatoyama, would not be repeated, the CSIS instructions of the previous year would be faithfully implemented. The client state was back in business, with the same answer to the “principle question” posed 60 years earlier by John Foster Dulles as given then, however reluctantly, by Yoshida Shigeru. The word “proactive” hinted at the bold spirit that could be expected of real “Tier-one” countries. As to what it might mean, in the lecture he delivered to the Hudson Institute Abe referred, as if it were almost the same thing, to “collective security” and to “collective self-defense” operations (with the US). The former might not be problematic if undertaken under a UN warrant, but the latter, “collective self-defense,” was problematic in the sense that it appeared to include the right to join with other (i.e. US) forces in military action in the name of defense of Japan. All Japanese governments (and the nominally independent Cabinet Legislative Bureau on whose advise they depended) over more than half a century had understood that to be a right denied Japan under its constitution. By making this innocent-sounding promise, Abe was not only claiming retrospective legitimation for the constitutionally dubious Japanese participation in “coalitions of the willing” under US leadership in Middle East wars but he was de facto shedding (by revision or reinterpretation) Japan’s constitutional ban on war-participation and reliance on the threat or use of force. As Prime Minister Noda put it on Fuji TV in July 2012 (referring then to the Pentagon’s plan to deploy the controversial Osprey aircraft to Japan, initially to Okinawa): “When the American government has already decided something, there is no point in us talking about doing this or that.”

It was an admission of unprecedented candor.45 The “Anglo-Saxons” to whom Emperor Hirohito had wanted to entrust Japan remained in charge.

45

on the previous day, rendered the core concept not by the literal English equivalent, “positive pacifism,” but instead by the different expression, “making a proactive contribution to peace.” “Beikoku wa doko ieru hanashi ja nai,” Livedoor News, 16 July 2012. http:// news.livedoor.com/article/detail/6767394/ See also See Medoruma Shun, “No to

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The core concept to which Abe repeatedly referred in his response to the American demands was variously referred to in Japanese as “positive pacifism” (sekkyokuteki heiwashugi) and in English as “positive contribution to peace.”46 The word “pacifist” would have been incongruous to refer to an alliance with the greatest military power in history, whereas the term “positive contribution to peace” had a certain ambiguity and could be interpreted to include interventions under US leadership virtually anywhere. Abe had spent his political career combating “pacifism” in the shape of the principle declared by Article 9 of the constitution, urging its fundamental revision to turn Japan into a “normal” country, meaning a normal military great power; he could scarcely embrace such constitutional “pacifism.” Furthermore, the US government and policy intellectuals in Washington had long made clear that they too did not want a Japan that was “positively” – or any other kind – of pacifist. Instead, through the post-Cold War they had pressed it to abandon any such pretensions, set aside “anachronistic restraints” (referring to Japan’s abhorrence for “the threat or use of force” and its Article 9 pledge to the international community), and promote “interoperability,” in effect the merger of Japanese with US forces.47 Abe understood it to be the mission of the US military to establish and preserve “peace” world-wide. His Japan would make its “poisitive contribution to peace” by promising Japan’s full cooperation in that mission. Since war was the constant of the US global presence, Japan’s contribution to peace would likewise be through war. JAPAN THE BEAUTIFUL

The tension between the two poles of the San Francisco Japanese identity formula – subservience to the US and the assertion of national purity and superiority – sharpened in the two and a half post-Cold War decades and especially in the time of Abe Shinzo. Japan’s fraught identity construction, striving simultaneously to confirm and intensify military cooperation with the United States and restore the “proud,”

46

47

ienai seijika tachi,” Uminari no shima kara, 17 July 2012. http://blog.goo.ne.jp/ awamori777/e/502c985fd40d724097ced833f225038d/ Sori Kantei [Prime Minister’s Department], “Speeches and statements by the Prime Minister.” http://japan.kantei.go.jp/96_abe/statement/201309/index.html/ Richard Armitage and Joseph S. Nye, “The US-Japan Alliance: Anchoring Stability in Asia,” CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies), August 2012.

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emperor-centered polity of the early 20th century, was dependent but simultaneously assertive, fawning yet glorious, understandable only by an oxymoronic term such as “Dependent Shinto.” The promotion of “correct,” denialist history could scarcely be expected to meet favor in Washington. Even less could attempts to justify the wars of the 1930s and 1940s as directed at the “liberation” of Asia, or the belittling of Japan’s wartime crimes and atrocities. The burden of resolving the contradiction fell heavily upon Abe Shinzo. The first part of his puzzle was to make the bilateral relationship with the US more “mature,” which meant stepping up its military contribution for the post-Cold War era. It meant above all for Japan to increase its share of the burden of hegemony, to pay more and to take greater steps to coordinate its military and strategic posture with that of its patron. Abe inherited the 2006 agreement on “reorganization of US forces in Japan” (beigun saihen) from his predecessor government, and he applied himself to implementing it, as discussed below. But the task of articulating his understanding of Japanese identity and history within the frame of overarching subordination to the US proved more difficult. Abe’s April 2015 Washington speech was so worded as to express sadness (“remorse”) while avoiding admission of legal responsibility for war, atrocities, or Comfort Women. Much hung on that single word “remorse,” rendered in Japanese by the obscure term, “kaigo.” Both words (English and Japanese) were calculated to convey a quasi-religious sense of sadness for pain caused without opening any possibility of redress. While he endorsed the statements issued by previous Prime Ministers, notably Murayama Tomiichi, he avoided key words such as “aggression” and “apology” and any reference to the direct role of the Japanese military in recruiting and managing the comfort women system. During his joint news conference with President Obama (repeating the formula he had used in interview two days earlier with the 8BTIJOHUPO
1PTU), he said: “I am deeply pained to think about the comfort women who experienced immeasurable pain and suffering as a result of victimization due to human trafficking.”48 48

“Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Abe of Japan in Joint Press Conference,” White House, 28 April 2015. https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-pressoffice/2015/04/28/remarks-president-obama-and-prime-minister-abe-japan-jointpress-conference/

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He thus avoided both the term “sex slave” and any reference to the role of the Imperial Japanese Army in organizing and controlling the enslavement. Having played a key role for twenty years in the campaign to cast doubt on the terms of the Murayama and Kono apologies, his “remorse” was directed at President Obama rather than the women themselves. In December 2015, Abe’s government took a further step. Japan’s Foreign Minister stated that Japan’s then military authorities had been involved in the wartime trafficking and sexual slavery, Prime Minister Abe issued a fresh apology to the surviving women, and the Japanese and South Korean governments agreed that, with the Japanese payment of one billion yen (ca. $8.3 million) to set up a foundation to support the surviving women, the issue was to be considered “finally and irrevocably resolved.” South Korea, in turn, pledged to drop its demand for reparation, end all criticism of Japan on the issue, and remove a memorial constructed by Korean “comfort women” survivors in 2011 in front of Japan’s embassy in Seoul. Finality and irrevocability, however, were not to be easily accomplished. The agreement was criticized from the start for not placing the victims at its center. Although it offered a “heartfelt apology and remorse” it did so only for the “involvement of Japanese military authorities,” while not recognizing or accepting legal responsibility for establishing and maintaining the system. It therefore failed (as David Tolbert of the International Center for Transitional Justice put it, to meet “criteria set out in international human rights norms that a public apology must be an “acknowledgement of the facts and acceptance of responsibility.”49 Instead, the 2015 agreement appeared to have come about at least in part due to pressure from the United States, and to have been motivated by the intent to present a united military and geo-political front (of US, Japan, and South Korea) against North Korea and China rather than by the desire to render justice to comfort women. As Tolbert put it, “An apology should open up space for accountability rather than close it.”50 The existence of commemorative statues in various cities around the world (including not only Seoul and Busan in South Korea but 49

50

David Tolbert (President, International Center for Transitional Justice), “Japan’s Apology to South Korea Shows What Public Apologies Should (Not) Do,” The 8PSME
1PTU (Huffington Post), 29 January 2016, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ david-tolbert/japans-apology-to-south-k_b_9111566.html/ Tolbert, op. cit.

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also in the US, China, Canada, Philippines, and Australia) continued to irritate Japan and the South Korean government was constrained by strong public sentiment from any moves to comply with Japanese wishes and have them removed. The ICTJ remarked trenchantly: “Certainly, apologies should not be used to remove or devalue measures, such as memorials and monuments – especially those established by victims themselves – to ensure that violations are not forgotten. Memorials built by victims that are strongly supported by society are not for the government of the day, let alone a foreign government responsible for war crimes, to remove. That only adds grave insult to irreparable injury.

Early in 2017 the Korean reluctance to remove such statues from the vicinity of Japan’s embassy in Seoul and consulate in Busan led to Japan withdrawing its ambassador to South Korea in protest.51 Shortly afterwards, when Japan’s consul in Pusan, Morimoto Yasuhiro, admitted in a private meeting to doubts about the wisdom of the policy he had to implement, he was sacked (“replaced”).52 Then, in December 2017 the South Korean government concluded from a five-month investigation ordered by incoming President Moon Jae-in that the 2015 agreement was fundamentally flawed and consequently “cannot solve the comfort women issue.” Moon’s government’s found that it “violates general principles in international society concerning resolution of historical issues.”53 The intractability of the confrontation became even plainer from the revelation in the Korean report of 2017 that the 2015 deal had included several “secret” clauses, inserted at the request of senior Japanese officials.’ The Korean government had agreed to “persuade” the Korean bodies responsible for construction of the monuments to somehow resolve the matter (by demolition or shifting to less sensitive location), ensuring that no such commemorative statues were constructed in third countries, and absolutely refraining from any use of the term “sex slave.” The revelation of the Japanese insistence on such secret conditions, long suspected but now confirmed, was seen generally as confirmation 51

52

53

Kyodo, “Kishida meets with South Korean counterpart, demands removal of ‘Comfort Women’ statue in Busan,” Japan Times, 20 February 2017. “Japan replaces Busan consul general after unusually short stint,” The Mainichi, 1 June 2017. Kanga Kong and Isabel Reynolds, “Japan lashes out as South Korea reviews ‘comfort women’ sex-slave deal,” Sydney Morning Herald, 28 December 2017.

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of the imposition of the Abe view of history upon the negotiations. The Japan-South Korea relationship sank to a new low, with Prime Minister Abe threatening to cancel his invited participation in the opening events of the Olympic Winter Games about to open at Pyeongchang in South Korea and officials for his government insisting there could be no re-negotiation, ever. The gulf between the Abe government and global civil society, evident from his first term in 2006, widened. It is hard to see how the confrontation, fundamentally challenging the Abe view of history and identity, is to be resolved. David Tolbert of ICTJ offered one suggestion: “The United Nations and national governments should now step in and ask Japan, after so many years, to unequivocally acknowledge its responsibility to ‘comfort women’ for past sexual slavery crimes with a full and meaningful apology coupled with effective reparations.”

Chapter Three

Okinawa – The Client State’s Client State ™

JAPAN IN THE EAST [CHINA] SEA

Japan’s southwestern, frontier islands, Okinawa Island itself at their heart, have throughout the modern era concentrated the pressures of the nation state to such a degree that they may be seen as a kind of Japanese client state, and since their primary raison d’être since 1945 has been service of the US military, their clientilist status is dual, to the US and to Japan. Okinawa may be seen as a uniquely colonial territory, subject to dual denial of sovereignty.1 Okinawa Island is the largest of the islands that stretch from Japan’s Kyushu for about 1100 kilometers through the East [China] Sea to (and even slightly beyond) Taiwan. For roughly half a millennium (1372–1879), the major islands of Okinawa and Sakishima groups constituted the Ryukyu Kingdom, self-governed and part of the China-centered “tribute system.” Together with the Osumi and Amami groups, the Okinawa islands divide the East [China] Sea from the Pacific Ocean. “Tribute” missions plied the routes between Okinawa (then the Ryukyu kingdom) and the China coast and Western Pacific to Siam and Vietnam. Ritual submission seems to have been unmarked by violence or protest. Farthest are the Sakishima (literally “farthest”) Island groups, comprising Miyako and Yaeyama. Yaeyama 1

On the “Okinawa problem,” see Gavan McCormack and Satoko Oka Norimatsu, Resistant Islands: Okinawa Confronts Japan and the United States, Rowman and Littlefield, 2012, for the period to 2012, and for post-2012 my essays in The AsiaPacific Journal, http://apjjf.org//, and most recently, Gavan McCormack, “Ryukyu/ Okinawa’s Trajectory – From Periphery to Center, 1600–2015,” in Sven Saaler and Chris Szpilman, eds, Routledge Handbook of Japanese History, London and New York, Routledge, 2018. 66

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in turn includes three main islands, Ishigaki, Iriomote and Yonaguni, together with the uninhabited group of islets known in Japan as Senkaku and in China as Diaoyu, which for administrative purposes form part of the Yaeyamas although they lie on the opposite side of the Ryukyu Trench (a Himalayan range in reverse, with depths up to 10,000 meters). The islands of the Ryukyu chain were the last sector of today’s Japanese territory to be incorporated in the modern Japanese state, a process accompanied, uniquely, by force: invasion in 1609 leading to partial incorporation, but with sufficient residual sovereignty to be able to negotiate 19th century treaties opening relations with the US (1854), France (1855), and the Netherlands (1859), followed by full incorporation as an act of “punishment” (shobun) in 1879, a disposition to which the ruling elite submitted only under torture, Ryukyu sovereignty forcibly extinguished. China protested, but those two interventions, taking place at moments of maximum Chinese weakness and disorder, during the early 17th century decline of the Ming dynasty in the former case and the late 19th century decline of the Qing dynasty in the latter, were decisive. Shuri castle, seat of the Ryukyu kings, was converted into a military base, Okinawans were forbidden to use their own language and forced to adopt emperor-worshipping Japanese state Shinto religion. Japan’s assimilationist policies had a plainly genocidal element. As the last, and in many respects the least, region of the new Japanese state, Okinawa faced prejudice and discrimination. In 1945 it was devastated when Japan’s government stubbornly resisted surrender while one quarter of the Okinawan population fell victim to the “typhoon of steel” that was the sea-borne US invasion of Okinawa. The horror of this time, marked by forced suicides and the execution of Okinawans as spies because they spoke their own language, is indelibly etched in the Okinawan collective memory. Okinawa then passed under US military rule, first by conquest and then from 1952 (partly at the suggestion of the Showa emperor in whose name so many Okinawans had so recently been sacrificed), becoming again the Ryukyu Islands, under direct US military rule in accord with the San Francisco Treaty. Not until 1972 was Okinawa restored to Japan, and even then the bases remained intact, US freedom to engage in war unlimited, and the government of Japan paid the US to maintain its occupation. The Okinawan polity remains to this day subject to the principle agreed by the two states of “military first.”

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When Japan’s modern state in 1879 unilaterally abolished the Ryukyu kingdom and severed its long links to the Beijing-centered “tribute system,” China protested. US president Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) mediated to try to resolve the differences. Japan sought a comprehensive revision of the Japan-China Treaty that opened relations between the two countries in 1871. It wanted the same unequal treaty rights (“most favored nation” status) in mainland China as were enjoyed by the established imperialist powers. In return it offered to split the Ryukyus: ceding the south-western islands of Miyako and the Yaeyama’s to China. China countered with a proposal for a three way split: the northern islands, including Amami, to Meiji Japan, the main island of Okinawa to become independent under a restored Ryukyu/Okinawa king, and the southwest islands ceded to China.2 Both proposals agreed that the Miyako and Yaeyama island groups, that is to say the Okinawan islands closest to the Senkaku/Diaoyus), should be China’s. A treaty in line with the Chinese proposal was drawn up early in 1881 but not actually adopted because of high-level opposition within the Chinese government.3 Japan’s readiness to abandon its border islands was forgotten, and eventually it dictated its terms on the region following victory in war against China in 1894–1895. Then pre-eminent Chinese leader Li Hungjang is said to have objected that “Ryukyu is neither Chinese nor Japanese territory, but a sovereign state.”4 When China, one hundred and thirty-two years later, protested that there had never been an agreement between the two countries on the status of Okinawa, whose status was therefore “unresolved,” it was stating a simple historical fact.5 Today, nearly 70 years after the San Francisco Treaty and more than two decades after conclusion of the Cold War, US forces still occupy 20 per cent of the 2

3

4

5

Hane Jiro, “Senkaku mondai ni naizai suru horiteki mujun,” Sekai, November 2012, pp. 112–119, at pp. 116–118. Uemura, op. cit., p. 89. On the “phantom treaty,” Sato Masaru, “Nihon seifu ni yoru 1952 nen no Okinawa kirisute o kangaeyo,” Shukan kinyobi, 11 May 2012, pp. 24–25. Quoted in Utsumi Shozo, “Okinawa mushi, gyogyo kyotei de mo,” Okinawa taimusu, 17 May 2013, See the series on Senkaku/Diaoyu published in Renmin rihbao, 8–10 May 2013, especially part 3, “Ma-guan joyaku to Diaoyudao mondai o ronjiru,” Renmin rihbao (Japanese edition), 10 May 2013. http://j.people.com.cn/94474/204188/8237309. html/

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land of Okinawa Island, concentrating three-quarters of all US military presence in the country, and base authorities retain a sovereign (extraterritorial) authority little diminished from the time when the island was under direct US military rule. Ryukyu/Okinawa has therefore seen a very distinctive early modern and modern history. Out of it, the Okinawan people today tend to take more seriously than elsewhere their constitutionally defined sovereign powers, to resist militarism and base-firstism and be sceptical of state agendas and priorities. Uniqueness, however, may also serve to qualify Okinawa to play a leading role in forging the sort of Sino-Japanese friendship on which some future East Asian community might rest. INCLUSION/EXCLUSION, AND DECEIT

Okinawa was excluded from the constitution that came into force in Japan in 1947, from the San Francisco treaty of 1952 and from the revised security arrangements of 1960, remaining under direct military rule until 1972. Its war role through the Korean and Indochinese wars contrasted sharply with mainland Japan’s “peace state.” During the 27-year period when Okinawa was completely under US rule, when there was no democracy and no mechanism for registering Okinawan protest, the American base structure was reduced in Japan proper but concentrated and expanded in Okinawa prefecture. US military bases and facilities came to occupy 18 per cent of the land of Okinawa Island (32 per cent of nearby Ie Island), including 82.5 per cent of Kadena Town, 59.3 per cent of Kin Town, 52.9 per cent of Chatan Town and 50.7 per cent of Ginoza Village. Over the 44 years since “reversion” Okinawan governments have sought in vain to regain the sovereignty then lost, but they face governments in Tokyo committed to faithful service of the US. Just 60 years ago, then US president Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote: “The natives on Okinawa are growing in numbers and are very anxious to repossess the lands they once owned.”6

But nothing changed. Okinawans continued to be dispossessed. Decades passed and the Cold War was liquidated elsewhere, but despite 6

DDE [Dwight David Eisenhower, then president], “Memorandum for the Record,” 9 April 1958, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–60, vol. 18, p. 16.

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Okinawan expectations of liberation, it was retained and reinforced for them, and they were subject to persistent deception and discrimination.7 Okinawa became, and remains today, a joint US-Japanese colony in all but name. Under the government of Sato Eisaku (1964–1972), the terms of Okinawa “reversion” were negotiated so the “reversion” was actually a “buy-back,” with Japan paying the US a huge sum – in the vicinity of $650 million – while promising the US that it could continue to hold and enjoy free use of its Okinawan assets. Thus was established the principle that was continued to this day whereby Japan pays the US “consideration” or “sympathy” (omoiyari) or “host nation support” payments to make sure the US continue its occupation.8 It is a relationship that can only be understood in “Client State” terms. All Japanese governments from 1969 to 2009 persisted in lying to parliament and people about the existence of secret protocols agreed during the Okinawa reversion negotiations and fundamentally about the nature of the US relationship. In 2008–2009, with former senior bureaucrats confirming their existence, the Hatoyama government ordered a search of the archives and the findings, published in March 2010, confirmed the main understandings.9 While the official construction of the event was that Okinawa’s “reversion” was kakunuki hondonami (without nuclear weapons and on a par with the rest of Japan), in fact the bases were reinforced and nuclear privilege confirmed. Sato’s government assured Washington that it could ignore the third of the so-called Non-Nuclear Principles (1967) of Non-Possession, Non-Production, Non-Introduction. The secret protocols of reversion, known therefore as Mitsuyaku (literally “Secret Agreements”), committed Japan to prioritize US continued prosecution of the war on Indochina and grant it free use of the nuclear option should it deem it necessary (under “conditions of great emergency”). The United States retained its bases and the freedom to fight wars from them. While under US military occupation, Okinawans had positively sought “reversion” because they hoped for release from military rule and because they longed for the principles of the 1947 Japanese constitution – peace, democracy, and human rights. Their aspiration was dashed, however, by the way the process was accomplished. Okinawan 7 8 9

For details, McCormack and Norimatsu, Resistant Islands, passim. For details, McCormack and Norimatsu, pp. 193–196. For details, McCormack and Norimatsu, pp. 53–67.

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Chief Minister Yara Chobyo drew up a submission to the Diet setting forth the Okinawan vision of its future in accordance with constitutional principles but he was snubbed, his paper left unread, and the reversion bill passed the Diet while he was still on his way to the chamber. During the decades of secrecy and denial, Washington and Tokyo worried that the truth might out about the deal they had struck or that democracy might actually take hold in Okinawa. To address the former, truth-sayers were ruthlessly oppressed. Prominent among them was the Mainichi shimbun’s Nishiyama Takichi. Having learned of some of the secret protocols, Nishiyama became a whistle blower. For his pains he was subjected to savage attack on his character. More than forty years on, he still struggles in the courts to restore his reputation and to expose the “grand fiction” of “reversion.” He sees the process as “merely the first step that set the direction for subsequent Japanese diplomacy and security along the lines of the still continuing “realignment” of US forces in Japan, i.e. fusion of Japanese and US forces.”10 As for the fear of democracy, Ambassador Edwin Reischauer (1961– 1966) spelled out his recommended formula: use bribery to sway elections, but do so with care, avoiding the risk of exposure by channelling the funds through the LDP. One of those who performed this channelling role was Kaya Okinori, Finance Minister in Tojo’s wartime government who had been released from Sugamo prison in December 1948.11 Okinawans were disappointed, or outraged, that their “reversion” process should have delivered them deeper into subordination to US military agendas, and that the constitutional principles of peace, democracy and human rights were to be subordinated to the security treaty. Memory too, crucial to the sense of identity both personal and collective, is a fundamental right to which Okinawan people by the magnitude of their suffering surely earn entitlement. But as the present and future are contested, so is the past. In 2005, novelist Oe Kenzaburo and his publisher, Iwanami, were sued for defamation over the account in Oe’s 1970 Okinawa Notes that attributed responsibility to the Japanese military for ordering mass suicides on Zamami and Tokashiki Islands during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. What rightists and revisionists saw as glo10

11

Nishiyama Takichi, Okinawa mitsuyaku – ‘joho hanzai’ to Nichibei domei, Iwanami shinsho, No 1073, 2007, p. 2. Details in McCormack and Norimatsu, p. 82.

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rious acts of self-immolation were to Oe shameful acts undertaken at the orders of the Japanese military. Following the Abe government’s revision to the Fundamental Law of Education in 2006, the Education Ministry directed that moral and patriotic education should assume a core part in school curriculum and that history, geography, and civics text for junior and senior high school should “reflect the government’s official position on contentious historical issues.”12 The preferred texts for such purposes were those produced by Tsukurukai-affiliated publishers, in particular the Civics text produced by the publisher Ikuhosha, a publisher committed to the agenda of restoring national pride and closely linked to Tsukurukai.13 In March 2007, the Ministry of Education ordered the revision of high school history textbooks to delete reference to the involvement of the military in Okinawan “mass suicides.” Months later (29 September 2007), an enormous mass protest rally (about 117,000 people, probably the largest gathering in Okinawan history) demanded that the Ministry retract that order. When the Osaka District Court ruled in Oe’s favor (in 2008), a ruling that in due course the Supreme Court upheld in April 2011), the Ministry did not rescind its initial decision, merely softening slightly its stance and adopting the vague expression “military involvement” in place of formulations that referred to the military as having forced the deaths. As Abe resumed government at the end of 2012, he reinstated the special advisory council, staffing it with prominent revisionists who shared his own views.14 Thus, at the end of 2013, Abe made four appointments to the board of the national broadcaster, NHK. The newly appointed head declared that the wartime comfort women system was part of an institution that existed in “every country” and that it was only considered wrong based on “today’s morality.”15 He 12

13

14

15

Justin McCurry, “Japan: teachers to call Senkaku and Takeshima Islands Japanese territory,” The Guardian, 29 January 2014; Kyodo News, “History texts to get an official spin,” Japan Times, 14 November 2013. See the two part analysis (hereafter Maeda, part 1 and Maeda, part 2) by Maeda Sawako, “Yureru Yaeyama no kyokasho erabi,” Peace Philosophy Center, 14 September 2011. http://peacephilosophy.blogspot.com/2011/09/blog-post_16.html/ and “Yaeyama kyokasho mondai no shinso,” Peace Philosophy Center, 23 May 2012, http://peacephilosophy.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/part-ii.html/ Koide Reiko, “Critical new stage in Japan’s textbook controversy,” The Asia-Pacific Journal - Japan Focus, March 2014, p. 2. Kyodo News, “New NHK chief: ‘comfort women’ only wrong per ‘today’s morality’; programming must push Japan’s territorial stances,” Japan Times, 25 January 2014.

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later abandoned the institutional claim to neutrality by declaring, in January 2014, “If the government says right, who are we to say left?” Another NHK director claimed that the Nanjing massacre of 1937 never occurred and that Americans had “fabricated war crimes against Japanese leaders in order to cover up American atrocities.”16 Yet another, harking back to the constitution of pre-1945 Japan, praised the leader of a rightist group who had committed ritual suicide in 1993 and saw his death as a confirmation that Emperor Akihito had been a “living god.”17 Matters of history and memory continued to stir passionate debate. The Okinawan novelist, Medoruma Shun, referred to the aim of the lawsuit and of textbook revisions as: “To undermine the view of the Self Defense Forces held in Okinawa and Japan as a whole, based on lessons learned from the Battle of Okinawa, that military forces do not protect people,” 18

and to construct a national consensus around the notion of Japan as a “country that can go to war.” To that end, the barbarism of “collective suicide” being ordered and compelled by “friendly” Japanese forces mobilized in the war system had to be covered up or negated.”19 The Okinawan crisis that continues today began in its acute form on September 4, 1995, when three US servicemen abducted and raped a 12-year-old Okinawan schoolgirl. Crimes by American military personnel were far from unusual but this incident was especially shocking because it seemed that the prime concern of the two nation-states was to neutralize public anger while preserving and reinforcing the base priority system. A bi-national “Special Action Committee on Okinawa” (SACO) announced (in December 1996) that Futenma Marine Corps Air Station (a 480 hectare site that sits incongruously amid the bustling city of Ginowan and had become 16

17 18

19

For a statement from Hyakuta Naoki, said to be a “close friend” of Prime Minister Abe, see: Kirk Spitzer, “Japanese broadcast official: We didn’t commit war crimes, the US just made that up,” Time, 7 February 2014. Ibid. Medoruma Shun, as translated by Steve Rabson, "Case Dismissed: Osaka Court Upholds Novelist Oe Kenzaburo for Writing that the Japanese Military Ordered ‘Group Suicides’ in the Battle of Okinawa,” Japan Focus, 8 April 2008. (http:// japanfocus.org/-Steve-Rabson/2716.) Ibid.

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inconvenient, dangerous, and obsolescent) would be returned to Japan “within five to seven years.” US forces first occupied the Futenma site when the residents of the area had been rounded up into detention centers even before the formal Japanese surrender at the end of the war. They have continued to occupy it, in breach of international law (Article 46 of the 1907 Hague Convention on the Laws and Customs of War forbids occupying armies from confiscation of private property) even if with the consent, or encouragement, of the government of Japan, ever since. Where in 1972 “reversion” (of Okinawa) had meant “retention,” in 1996 “reversion” (of Futenma) meant “substitution”: the construction of a “heliport” alternative, one that slowly morphed into a new, enlarged, multiservice facility to be built at the fishing vilage of Henoko on Oura Bay in norhern Okinawa. “Five to seven year” periods succeeded one another, however, and two decades passed without any Futenma reversion. The chosen substitute site was one that had been preferred by the Pentagon since the peak years of the Vietnam War. From 1996 (when a plebiscite in Nago City voted against construction of any new base in the city), the FRF (Futenma Replacement Facility) plan was repeatedly either rejected by a citizenry angry at the injustice and unfairness of the attempt to impose one more base on their already base-burdened prefecture or, between 1999 and 2002, reluctantly accepted by local government authorities but only under conditions – civil-military joint use, limited (15 year) term, environmental assurances – that were tantamount to rejection. The more Okinawans rejected the project or subjected it to impossible conditions, the more it grew, the floating, temporary heliport of the 1996 designs slowly shedding its conditions and expanding its scale as the modestly named “heliport” and growing into a gigantic “Futenma Replacement Facility” (FRF) under the 2006 “Realignment of US Forces in Japan” (Beigun saihen) agreement. It was to be built on a 160 hectare reclaimed site fronting Henoko Bay to the east and Oura Bay to the west, imposing on it a mass of concrete towering 10 meters above the sea and including two 1,800 meter runways and a deep-sea 272 meter-long dock. It was designed to far exceed Futenma in scope and function as a combined, multifunctional land-sea-air base whose major, if unstated, role would be to confront and contain China. The target date for reversion keeps

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being pushed back, thanks largely to the protest movement, and is currently set at 2025. The process of “return” of Futenma, amounting to one of reinforcement and expansion of military function, was matched by that for the return of about half of the vast Yambaru forest “Northern Training Area” area spanning Higashi and Kunigami villages in northern Okinawa known to the Americans as Camp Gonsalves and serving as a Jungle Warfare Center. The sites chosen for the Henoko and Takae projects include some of the most bio-diverse and spectacularly beautiful coastal and forest zones in all Japan, part of what the Ministry of the Environment wants to have recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Henoko hosts a cornucopia of life forms from blue – and many other species of – coral through crustaceans, sea cucumbers and seaweeds and hundreds of species of shrimp, snail, fish, tortoise, snake and mammal, many rare or endangered, and strictly protected, not least the dugong, the much loved and iconic resident that chooses to munch on the sea-grasses of Oura Bay, and Takae, surrounded by the Yambaru forest with its multiplicity of rare and endangered species, including not just the wellknown Yambaru Rail and Prior’s woodpecker but others such as Temminck Robin and Ryukyu wood pigeon, fresh-water goby, and warty salamander (iboimori), Holst’s frog and Namie’s frog.20 Other species undoubtedly still await discovery. If built, the Henoko FRF, its associated Osprey pads and the nearby Kadena US Air Force base would constitute through the 21st century potentially the largest concentration of military power in East Asia. The substance of the US-Japan relationship was nowhere more clearly to be seen than in the agreement of 2009, known as the Guam International Agreement (GIA). Its negotiations were characterized by the same deception as the “reversion” of 1972 (of Okinawa) and of 1996 (of Futenma). As the LDP, having long served as the instrument of US purpose, teetered towards collapse (which came in the form of electoral landslide defeat on 30 August), and as the Henoko project remained stalled by determined Okinawan opposition, the US government moved to secure its objectives against any challenge, binding 20

Miyagi Kuniharu, “‘Takae asesu’ no mondaiten,” Nihon kankyo kaigi, Okinawa no kankyo, heiwa, jichi, jinken, Nanatsumori shokan, 2017, pp. 85–90, and Miyagi Akino, “Higashi-son Takae, Kunigami-son Aha no shizen to Beigun heripaddo kensetsu no eikyo,” ibid., pp. 69–84.

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not only the present but any subsequent Japanese government. Hillary Clinton, then Secretary of State, was despatched to Tokyo to extract from the dying Japanese LDP government a formal international agreement on the ongoing US Military Reorganization that would cover both the Henoko project and a new development, the transfer of a substantial number of Marines from Okinawa to Guam. The deal had to be done before the government collapsed and was replaced by a Democatic Party intent on renegotiating the relationship (as in due course happened on 30 August). It was effectively a design to defeat Japanese democratic intent.21 Clinton got what she wanted: Japan would proceed without fail with the languishing Henoko project and it would also pay $6.1 billion ($2.9 billion of it in cash) towards the cost of relocating 8,000 Marines (and their 9,000 dependents, from Okinawa to Guam. Furthermore, as a US embassy despatch (later released by Wikileaks) put it in 2008, “both the 8,000 and the 9,000 numbers were deliberately maximized to optimize political value in Japan,” since there were at the time in Okinawa only “on order of 13,000 marines, and “less than 9,000” dependents (rather than the nominal 18,000 marines).22 It meant Japan would pay a vast sum to remove from Okinawa around 60 per cent of the very force that it insisted was indispensable to national defense. Not only would it pay to diminish its “deterrent” force of Marines but it would also construct multiple facilities that included medical clinic, fire station, bachelor enlisted quarters, and so on on US territory (Guam). Furthermore, to avoid the impression that the Japanese side was being exploited by having it meet an overwhelming proportion of the Realignment costs, it was decided to “increase the overall cost estimate and thereby reduce Japan’s share of total costs.” This was done by inflating the US share of project costs by inclusion of a one billion dollar item for construction of a military road on Guam, one that was neither necessary nor likely ever to be built.23 Months later, when Hatoyama Yukio did indeed come to office pledging to transfer Futenma “at least outside Okinawa” (saitei demo 21

22 23

Gavan McCormack, “Hillary in Japan – the enforcer,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 22 February 2009. Sakurai Kunitoshi, “The Guam treaty as a modern ‘disposal’ of the Ryukyu’s,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 21 September 2009. http://apjjf.org/-Sakurai-Kunitoshi/3223/article.html/ McCormack and Norimatsu, pp. 104–107. McCormack and Norimatsu, p. 104.

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kengai), his ultimate surrender was essentially pre-determined by this Agreement. The return to government of Abe Shinzo at the head of the LDP in December 2012 raised in sharp relief the questions of memory and territory. Okinawans were apprehensive of Abe’s general stance as a longtime member of Diet organizations for “passing on of correct history,” for a “bright Japan,” and for “Shinto politics,” a determined promoter of the cause of collective security, base realignment (Henoko construction), and constitutional revision, who insisted that students be taught a “proud” and “pure” view of the history of their country (and to love it) as they were of his territorial views – that there was “no room for negotiation” with China on the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands and that what was called for was not negotiation but “physical force incapable of being misunderstood,” as he put it.24 While Tokyo attached the highest priority to meeting its commitments to Washington, in 2012 the Obama government in Washington engaged on a comprehensive re-think of its global and Pacific strategy, in the course of which it unilaterally revisited the Guam Agreement package, slashing the number of marines to go there to 4,700 (sending other contingents to Australia and Hawaii and the Philippines). The Government of Japan, in a late 2013 “Protocol to Amend the Guam International Agreement,” accepted the new arrangement, reiterated its commitments on Henoko and Guam, and added a pledge to cooperate in a new joint military project on the Northern Marianas (Tinian). It also promised to move towards construction of two new bases, an “International Emergency Center” on Shimojishima (part of the Miyako Island group in southern Okinawa) and a possible “night takeoff and landing” site for carrier-based planes on Mage Island in the Osumi island group just south of Kagoshima. 25 The Japanese government’s underlying purpose was not so much the “defense” of Japan as the persuasion of influential members of the US Senate who had called for abandoning the idea of an “expensive replacement facility” for Futenma as “unrealistic, unworkable, and unaffordable.”26 If Japan was to pay, the word “unaffordable” could be 24 25

26

Abe Shinzo, “Atarashii kuni e,” Bungei shunju, January 2013, 124–133, at p. 130. McCormack and Norimatsu, p. 192. (Despite the steady widening of the Japanese commitment towards the realignment, its “direct cash contribution” was to remain unchanged at “up to $2.8 billion.” (Defense of Japan 2013). Senators John McCain, Dan Levin and Jim Webb, (McCormack and Norimatsu, p. 203).

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struck out. The extension of the Guam Agreement to cover the Northern Marianas, Miyako and Mage Islands was designed to sweeten the arrangements for such sceptics. AN “OKINAWAN WAY”

While for Tokyo’s purposes the underlying principle of Okinawa policy through the post-reversion years has always been “base-first-ism” – essentially the Dulles 1951 principle of whatever force, wherever, and for whatever period – Okinawans – i.e. the Okinawan civil movement – gradually formulated a political stand in which priority attached to constitutionalism and “livelihood-first-ism,” and according to which the bases had to be wound back and eventualy abolished. Since the end of the Cold War, they have sought ways to engage more closely with neighboring states and peoples, across and beyond the conventional boundaries of the state. Under Governor Ota Masahide (1990–1998), Okinawa pursued a grand design for the approaching 21st century, for Okinawa as a “Cosmopolitan,” or “International” City.27 It was an attempt to turn peripherality in the national space into centrality in the regional space, harkening back to the social memory of the time predating the rise of the modern Japanese state when in a nominally Sinic world, the Ryukyu Kingdom had flourished as a trading link between the communities of East and Southeast Asia, on the principle of open seas, demilitarized, respected. Ota’s design had political and identity, as well as trade and investment, implications. However, it depended on its policy twin, the “Action Program” to get rid of the bases on Okinawa (by 2015). “Cosmopolitan” Okinawa would have to be be demilitarized. He found, however, that Tokyo would not compromise on the principle of “basefirst-ism” for Okinawa. It was reluctant to loosen the strings of bureaucratic control so as to make Okinawa sufficiently autonomous to be able to take the necessary initiatives towards a regional community. Frozen from all official contacts with the national government for 10 months from February 1998, scarcely able to govern because of Tokyo’s hostility and its probably illegal and unconstitutional interventions, Ota suffered electoral defeat. After his term as Governor ended, his larger project was shelved. The Cosmopolitan City morphed into a more modest Free Trade 27

“Ken, ‘kokusai toshi koso’ o kettei,” Ryukyu shimpo, 11 November 2006.

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Zone (at Nakagusuku) in March 200028 and smaller-scale projects, for a liberalized Finance and IT Zones based on Naha and Nago cities went ahead from 2002.29 In March 2010, Okinawa prefecture drew up a new plan, a “21st Century Vision,” that harked again to the idea of Okinawa as a regional hub, linked by free, or greatly decontrolled, exchanges of people, goods and capital between it and its neighbor territories around or across the East [China] Sea.30 As in Ota’s time, however, such agendas were difficult to reconcile with the government’s insistence that Okinawa’s primary raison d’être had to remain service of US military purpose. In 2010 for the first time in an official document, the bases were described as “a large obstacle in the path of Okinawan development” and a burden “that Okinawa has to strive ceaselessly to overcome.”31 From the Nago City plebiscite of December 1997 saying “No” to any new Marine base, the national government has devoted itself to trying to persuade, split, or otherwise neutralize the Okinawan democratic mobilization. Instead, however, the “No” movement gradually spread prefecture-wide and became a resistance. The mayor and City Assembly of Nago City, the Governor, the Prefectural Assembly (the Okinawan parliament) the heads of virtually all local governing bodies in the prefecture, all rejected the Henoko project. The question of constitutionalism is addressed separately below, but it goes without saying that this amounted to a comprehensive denial to Okinawa of the rights declared in the constitution’s Articles 94 and 95. 94. Local public entities shall have the right to manage their property, affairs and administration and to enact their own regulations within law. 95. A special law, applicable only to one local public entity, cannot be enacted by the Diet without the consent of the majority of the voters of the local public entity concerned, obtained in accordance with law.

28

29 30

31

After more than ten years, as of June 2011 there were just seven companies occupying the 96 designated sites on the 89.7 hectare site (7.2 per cent of the area). (“‘San-K keizai’ kara jiritsu e, ken to keizaikai no mosaku,” The Asahi Shimbun, Globe, 20 February 2012. http://globe.asahi.com/feature/100920/03_1.html) “‘San-K keizai’ kara jiritsu e, ken to keizaikai no mosaku,” op. cit. “Okinawa 21 seiki bijon,” Naha, Okinawa Prefecture, March 2010, p. 1. http:// www.pref.okinawa.jp/21vision/index.html/. “Okinawa 21 seiki bijon.”

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As the Japanese state struggled to overcome the Okinawan opposition, it became increasingly oppressive, ignoring, violating, or manipulating the law, even, seemingly, in inverse proportion to the number of occasions on which state leaders proclaimed their adherence to the “rule of law.” An Environmental Impact (EI) study into the projected Futenma replacement facility at Henoko was carried out between 2007 and 2011 but it was conducted under the auspices of the Department of Defense, i.e. the Government itself rather than an independent body, by companies staffed with freshly appointed officials from that same Department. They treated the process as an irksome formality whose outcome was determined in advance by the Japanese government formal commitment under the US-Japan agreements of 2006 and 2009 to construct and hand over the base in 2014. The EI process was further diminished in that it was a study of the environmental impact of something beyond Japan’s jurisdiction since, once the base was handed over to it, the Marine Corps would use it at its own unfettered discretion. Key evidence was withheld, such as that concerning the Pentagon intention, from 1996, to introduce to the new base the tilt-rotor MV22 Osprey (vertical takeoff and landing or VTOL) aircraft in place of the conventional CH46 helicopters. The Osprey has a chequered history, marked by crashes and forced landings. It flies twice as fast, can carry three times as much load, and has an operational radius four times that of the CH46.32 It is also ear-crushingly noisy (as discussed below). Yet the Government of Japan repeatedly denied any knowledge of its planned Okinawan deployment until the environmental impact survey was complete and the deployment imminent. 33 Of that initial deployment in 2012, the local daily Ryukyu shimpo editorialized that: “The Japanese government follows the lead of the United States without question, as though it were a tributary nation of the United States rather than an independent nation.... The deployment of the Osprey to Okinawa essentially represents an ‘indiscriminate attack’ on the Okinawan people … If the Japanese and US governments force the deployment on the prefecture, the Okinawan people will undoubtedly come to oppose not only the US Marine Corps but all four arms of the US military.”34 32 33 34

“Osprey’s arrival foments distrust,” Japan Times, 24 July 2012. Details in McCormack and Norimatsu, op. cit. “The people’s mass rally against Osprey deployment” (in English), Ryukyu shimpo, 9 September 2012.

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Environmental law specialists declared the Environmental Impact study unscientific, illogical, illegal, the worst EI in Japanese history.35 Governor Nakaima himself filed 579 separate and particular objections and declared it “a practical impossibility to go ahead with the plan for construction at Henoko without local consent.”36 It was his considered view that “these works would destroy the environment and the conservation measures proposed by the Department of Defense would not be able to protect the local environment.”37 He was later to change his mind and issue the go-ahead for the project, but gave no reason to suggest he had revised these harsh judgements on the EI. As for the internationally protected dugong known to inhabit the Henoko site, the survey ignored the widely believed Okinawan view that the disturbance created by the survey had driven them away from their favored feeding-grounds, concluding there might only be a single creature in the vicinity and that the works would therefore not cause serious environmental concern. “KENPAKUSHO” AND “ALL OKINAWA”

With the “normal” democratic avenues to block the unwanted new base exhausted, Okinawans in late January 2013 formed themselves into a delegation, some 150 strong, to deliver to the government in Tokyo what they called a “Kempakusho” or statement of demand. The delegation comprised 38 city, town and village heads, 41 heads of city and town assemblies, 29 members of the Prefectural Assembly, and the handful of Okinawan members of the national Diet, together with representatives of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry and of the Prefectural Women’s Association. Others, even though not joining in the delegation, shared its stance, including the Governor, the 35

36 37

Governor Nakaima submitted two separate documents in response to the EI Statement, in February on the projected airport construction and in March on the projected large-scale reclamation, raising 175 specific objections in the former and 404 in the latter. For accounts of the former by Sakurai Kunitoshi, “Japan’s Illegal Environmental Assessment of the Henoko Base,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 27 February 2012, http://japanfocus.org/events/view/131, and “The Henoko Assessment Does Not Pass,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 4 March 2012, http://japanfocus.org/-John-Junkerman/3701, and for the latter, “Okinawa gov. blasts base relocation environment report again,” Mainichi Daily News, 28 March 2012. Sakurai, “The Henoko Assessment Does Not Pass.” Sakurai, ibid., and other articles posted on The Asia-Pacific Journal.

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prefectural branches of the major national political parties (including the conservative coalition partners, LDP and New Komeito), the two prefectural newspapers and majority opinion in general (according to repeated surveys that found opposition running at levels of 70 per cent or more). Naha city mayor, the conservative and sometime head of the LDP party in Okinawa (later to become Governor), Onaga Takeshi, spoke for the group, referring bitterly to “the US and Japanese government’s trampling on the will of the Okinawan people.” He articulated three demands: closure and return of Futenma, abandonment of plans for a “Futenma Replacement” anywhere in Okinawa, and withdrawal of the Osprey aircraft that the Marine Corps had just introduced.38 Referring to the prime minister’s pledge to “take back” Japan, Onaga asked, sarcastically, “Is Okinawa part of that Japan?” To the Okinawan media, he posed the rhetorical question: “Can the Japan and the people of Japan that treat the views of Okinawans with such contempt be regarded as a country worthy of the respect of Asia and the world?”39 The delegation was given short shrift. After a brief and fruitless meeting with the Prime Minister, its mostly conservative members were shocked to find themselves abused in the streets of Tokyo as “Chinese spies” or “traitors.” Henoko was to be much more than just “replacement” for Futenma, and the “Osprey” much more than mere replacement for conventional military helicopters. It flies twice as fast, carries up to three times as much load, and has an operational radius four times that of the CH-46 helicopter.40 It has had a chequered history, marked by repeated crashes and forced landings. Yet, as detailed below, the Government of Japan repeatedly denied any knowledge of its planned introduction to Okinawa until the environmental impact survey was complete and deployment imminent. Through much of the year that followed, Abe’s government set about persuading, splitting, or otherwise neutralizing the Okinawan opposition. On 22 March 2013 Abe formally requested of Governor Nakaima Hirokazu that he grant permission for the Oura Bay reclamation. In April, two prominent Okinawan Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP) Diet members surrendered, signaling their readiness to accept 38 39 40

“Kempakusho,” Sekai, March 2013, p. 154. Editorial, Ryukyu shimpo, 29 January 2013. “Osprey’s arrival foments distrust,” Japan Times, 24 July 2012.

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the project. In August Governor Nakaima issued a preliminary permit for rock and coral crushing in Oura Bay. In December the Okinawa chapter of the LDP itself (including all five national Diet members) dramatically signaled their submission and eventually Nakaima himself, though assuming the Governorship in 2010 on a platform to ask for Futenma replacement elsewhere in Japan but not in Okinawa (see below, pp. 82–83), famously “turned coat” during a week secreted in a Tokyo hospital in December 2013. In January 2014, Nago City (which includes Henoko and Oura Bay, the designated new base construction site) returned as its mayor the anti-base (“no new base in this city whether on land or on sea”) Inamine Susumu, in the process rejecting the extraordinary offer by the LDP Secretary-General of a 50 billion yen “inducement” fund for city development if only it would elect a pro-base candidate. The surrender of the Okinawa branch of the LDP provoked a split in the conservative ranks, those submitting to Abe outnumbered by those who followed Onaga Takeshi to merge the progressive camp into what became known as “All Okinawa.” Serious preparation for reclamation and construction at the Henoko site followed the Nakaima surrender. At the beginning of July 2014, Abe declared just over half of Oura Bay off limits and initiated the preliminary boring survey. Anticipating protest, he sent auxiliary detachments of police from Japan proper to reinforce the local Okinawan police and, at sea, ordered the National Coastguard to send their vessels to fend off the protesting canoes and kayaks. It was November 2014 before the Okinawan people had the opportunity to register their judgement on Nakaima’s reversal. They then, by a massive majority (380,820 to 261,076), dismissed him and chose in his stead former Naha City mayor and Kempakusho leader Onaga Takeshi. Onaga’s central platform was his promise to “do everything in my power” to stop the Henoko project. It meant that by December 2014 the prefecture had a Governor and a prefectural assembly (or parliament) both committed to stopping the construction works at Henoko and restoring Oura Bay. Just weeks after Onaga’s election, all four national Diet Okinawan constituencies dismissed their base-supporting members and installed committed opponents. Two years of Abe government had thus only reinforced prefectural opposition to base construction. It was a decisive rebuff to the government. The popular Okinawan resentment against the parliamentary turncoats of 2013 followed. In the election in July 2016 for Upper

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House of the Diet. Abe’s key Okinawan colleague Shimajiri Aiko confronted one of the best-known Okinawan opponents of the base construction, former Ginowan City mayor (two terms, 2003– 2010) Iha Yoichi. Though elected in 2010 on an anti-base platform Shimajiri had reversed herself in April 2013 and later that same year helped orchestrate the “surrender” of other conservative Diet members. She was highly appreciated in Abe circles not only for that role but for the views she expressed later: calling for the Riot Police and Coastguard to be mobilized to curb the “illegal, obstructionist activities” of the anti-base movement (February 2014), denouncing (anti-base construction) Nago mayor Inamine for “abusing his power” (April 2015), and referring contemptuously to the “irresponsible citizens’ movement” (October 2015). With such views, she rose meteorically in the Tokyo establishment, becoming Minister for Okinawa in the third Abe Cabinet. But to rise in Tokyo was to fall in Okinawa, as Shimajiri, and Abe, learned. By a majority of 100,000 votes, Okinawans in July 2016 ousted her and chose Iha. Although successive national governments put great effort into persuading local government authorities to cooperate with their base reinforcement plans, they had only limited success. Between 1996 and 2017 no Okinawan who adopted an explicitly pro-Henoko construction stance was returned at election for public office. It is true that candidates supported by the national government (LDP and Komeito) could win elections, but only if and to the extent that they focused their campaign on the economy (jobs) and local issues, avoiding mention of the base question. Not uncommonly, once elected, such LDP-supported Okinawans then switched from opposing to supporting base construction, as in the case of Shimajiri Aiko and Governor Nakaima discussed above. Thus by 2017 the prefecture itself, and the two cities of Naha (the capital) and Nago (site of the Henoko project) were under “All Okinawa” while “Team Okinawa,” more tolerant of new base construction, prevailed in nine other cities. However, in the October 2017 Lower House election while the Abe government could relish its nation-wide electoral triumph it could be expected to take grim note of the fact that three of Okinawa’s four seats went to All Okinawa, including Naha and Nago Cities (as part of Electoral Districts 1 and 3). Not only that but District No. 1 returned the only Japan Communist Party candidate to win a single seat constituency in the country and District

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No 2 likewise returned the only Social Democratic Party of Japan candidate to do likewise.41 THE ENIGMATIC GOVERNOR

Onaga Takeshi, elected Governor of Okinawa in December 2014, was an enigmatic figure. His appeal to Okinawan mass sentiment was based on his “re-birth” as an avatar of “All-Okinawa” identity politics, transcending the categories of conservative and progressive, “left” and “right,” and proclaiming the principle of “identity over ideology.” Yet, the problem with that “All Okinawa” mantra is that identities are commonly multiple. Onaga was both implacable opponent of the national government in certain respects and yet in other respects the quintessential, conservative local government Japanese politician. He was not only Okinawan but, like Prime Minister Abe, a lifelong (to 2014) member of the Liberal Democratic Party and a believer in the Ampo security system and in the need for US bases. While he posed a major challenge, rooted in identity politics, to the government of Japan (and beyond it, to that of the United States), it is not clear how far he could be expected to lead the prefecture against his conservative colleagues and counterparts at the helm of the nation, and whether Okinawan identity could trump ideology and generate a credible democratic politics. Onaga limited his differences with Tokyo to the three specific Kempakusho demands: closure of Futenma, cancellation of any Futenma replacement (i.e. Henoko) within Okinawa, and withdrawal of the MV-22 Osprey aircraft. He remained silent during the summer of nation-wide protest against the Abe government’s secrecy and security bills in 2015, suggesting that he supported, or at least did not oppose, Abe’s controversial interpretation of collective self-defense and security. He supported the Abe government’s scheme to deploy Ground Self-Defense Forces, including offensive surface-to-air, surface-to-ship missile units, along the chain of islands between Taiwan and Kagoshima to pose a threat against the passage of Chinese ships. He also remained silent on the Osprey-pad construction protest at Takae (on which see below, pp. 101ff), and made no visit to the site. When riot police reinforcements were sent from mainland Japan to 41

Okinawa Electoral District No 3 went to All-Okinawa’s Denny Tamaki of the People’s Life Party, headed by Ozawa Ichiro, and No 4 went to the LDP-supported and avowedly pro-base construction Nishime Kosaburo (of Team Okinawa).

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enforce works at Henoko from late 2015 and at Takae from July 2016 they were sent under the provisions of the National Police Law (1954) at the request of the Prefectural Public Safety Commission. Members of this Commission are responsible to and nominated (or dismissed by) the Governor, so, at least in theory, Onaga might have dismissed any or all of its five members and appointed others who would represent Okinawan principles. Choosing not to do so,42 he reserved his criticism for the reliance on force, the “excesses” rather than the act itself. He assured his hosts at the US State and Defense Departments in a February 2017 visit to Washington that he saw the US bases and the security treaty as important “for the defense of freedom, equality, democracy and human rights,” formulating his objection to the Henoko project in terms of the damage it might do to the “alliance” if a base had to be imposed by force. 43 Onaga was, nevertheless, occasionally eloquent and forthright in making the prefecture’s case. While Abe and his ministers insisted that the Henoko project amounted to a “burden reduction” for Okinawa, that it was the only way to achieve Futenma return and that it was irreversible, Onaga spoke of an inequitable and increasing burden, building upon the initial illegal seizure of Okinawan land and in defiance of the clearly and often expressed wishes of the Okinawan people; of a struggle for justice and democracy and for the protection of Oura Bay’s extraordinary natural biodiversity (which he described as being at least twice as rich in biota as the sea around Galapagos). He quoted the Okinawa Defense Bureau’s estimate that there were more than 5,800 kinds of biota in the Bay zone, (262 of them in danger of extinction).44 It is certain that no other prefectural governor in Japan would ever refer to the national government in the way that Onaga did, as “condescending,” “unreasonable,” “outrageous,” (rifujin), “childish” (otonagenai) and even “depraved” (daraku), or accuse it (before the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva in September 2015) of “ignoring the people’s will.”45 It is unlikely that any would lambast 42

43

44 45

Onaga, “Chinjutsusho,” 3 August 2016, Statement to Fukuoka Court, Okinawa prefecture home page, and (on Galapagos) “Henoko kakunin sosho, umetate zehi de honshitsu tsuke,” Ryukyu shimpo, editorial, 3 August 2016. Kihara Satoru, “Hobei de ‘oru Okinawa’ o itsudatsu shita Onaga chiji,” Ari no hitokoto, 7 February 2017. Figures given by Onaga, “Chinjutsusho.” “Henoko koji, ichinen chudan, Bei kaiheitai toppu ga shogen,” Ryukyu shimpo, 17 March 2016.

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the government’s weakness in being “completely lacking in ability to say anything to America,”46 or speak in terms like the following to the Chief Cabinet Secretary (and close Prime Ministerial associate), Suga Yoshihide: “For you to say to Okinawans whose land was taken from them while they were confined in detention centers for what is now an obsolescent base [i.e. Futenma], the world’s most dangerous, that they should bear that burden and, if they don’t like it, they should come up with an alternative plan … is the epitomy of the Japanese state’s political decadence.” 47

COURT PROCEEDINGS The Experts’ Report, 2015

The Okinawan political contest between national and prefectural governments, fought through a series of elections, has been matched by the judicial contest, fought in a series of five actions between 2015 and 2018, including referral to the Supreme Court. Upon assuming office as Governor at the beginning of 2015, Onaga set up a “Third Party Commission” of experts to advise him on the legal and environmental questions arising from the consent given by his predecessor to the reclamation of Oura Bay and to identify possible flaws in the legal process that might warrant its cancellation.48 On 16 July the Commission issued an unambiguous finding of multiple procedural “breaches” (kashi) in the way the Nakaima administration had made its crucial December 2013 decision. It found that “necessity for reclamation,” a crucial consideration under the 1973 revision to the “Reclamation of Publicly Owned Water Surfaces Act” (Koyu suimen umetateho, 1921), had not been established. Of the six specific criteria under Article 4 of that law, the Henoko project failed on three. It did not meet the tests of proof of “appropriate and rational use of the national land,” proper consideration for “environmental preservation 46

47

48

Onaga Takeshi, “Okinawa wa shinkichi o kobamu,” Sekai, (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten), January 2016, pp. 66–74 at p. 73. “Onaga chiji to Suga kanbo chokan no kaidan, boto hatsugen no zenbun,” Okinawa taimusu, 6 April 2015. Full title: “Third Party Commission on the Procedure for Approval of Reclamation of Public Waters for the Construction of a Futenma Replacement Airfield.”

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and disaster prevention,” or compatibility with “legally based plans by the national government or local public organizations regarding land use or environmental conservation.” It was also incompatible with other laws including the Sea Coast Law (1956) and the Basic Law for Biodiversity (2008).49 In sum, it declared the Henoko environmental impact assessment (EIA) process to be “the worst in the history of Japanese EIA.”50 While the Experts Committee was deliberating during early 2016, the Okinawa Defense Bureau began dropping concrete blocks (each weighing between 10 and 45 tons), into Oura Bay as anchor for the works to come. Onaga ordered them to stop (16 February) and Okinawan civil society and nature protection organizations pleaded likewise. However, Onaga declined to formally cancel the permit for rock and coral crushing issued by his predecessor. Inexplicably – because Okinawan newspapers showed photographs that seemed to leave little doubt about coral being crushed by concrete blocks) – he declared, “Unfortunately it is not possible to make a judgement as to destruction of coral.”51 Following a one-month (August-September 2015) lull in the Oura Bay confrontation while a round of “talks” was conducted, fruitlessly, the government reiterated (through the Minister of Defense) its stance that there had been no “flaw” in the license Nakaima had granted. It therefore ordered site works resumed. Japan’s Department of Defense began scouring the coastal hills and beaches of Western Japan, placing orders for millions of tons of soil and sand to dump into Oura Bay. It also ordered an additional 100-plus riot police from Tokyo to reinforce the mostly local Okinawan forces who till then had been imposing the state’s will at the construction site. On 13 October, Onaga adopted the Commission’s recommendation three months after it was released and formally cancelled (torikeshi) the reclamation license, whereupon, its license cancelled, the national government suspended site works. However, the Okinawa Defense Bureau (OBD) formally complained to the Ministry of Land, Infra49 50

51

Sakurai, op. cit. For an analysis by a prominent member of the panel, delivered immediately after submission of the formal report, see “To whom does the sea belong? Questions posed by the Henoko assessment,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 20 July 2015. http://apjjf.org/2015/13/29/Sakurai-Kunitoshi/4346.html/ “Zenkoku seron chosa, min-i ni soi ‘Henoko dannen’ o,” editorial,” Ryukyu shimpo, 21 April 2015.

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structure, Transport and Tourism (MLITT), protesting that there were no flaws in the Nakaima reclamation approval of December 2013 and asking MLITT to review, suspend, and nullify Onaga’s order under the Administrative Appeal Act.52 Following a cabinet meeting on 27 October, MLITT Minister Ishii Keiichi duly suspended the Onaga order on grounds that otherwise it would be “impossible to continue the relocation” and because in that event “the US-Japan alliance would be adversely affected.”53 To Governor Onaga, he issued first (27 October) an “advice,” and then, days later (6 November), an “instruction” to withdraw the cancellation order. Onaga refused. On 29 October works at Henoko resumed. Onaga’s next step was the launch, on 2 November, of a prefectural complaint against the Abe government with the Central and Local Government Disputes Management Council, a hitherto insignificant review body set up in 2000 by the government’s Department of General Affairs. That Council called no evidence and took barely six weeks, to 24 December, to dismiss the complaint, ruling, mysteriously, that the complaint was “beyond the scope of matters it could investigate.”54 While this Disputes Council complaint was being heard, on 17 November 2015 the national government (through MLITT) filed suit against the Okinawan government under the Administrative Appeals Act, alleging administrative malfeasance and seeking to have Onaga’s order set aside and a “proxy execution” procedure adopted. The presiding judge in this suit, Tamiya Toshiro, had only taken up office in this court two weeks earlier, on 30 October, following transfer by the Ministry of Justice from the Tokyo High Court, and there was speculation that his appointment, weeks before the national government suit against the Governor was lodged, might have been the result of bureaucratic/judicial collusion designed to ensure Okinawan submission to the base construction plan.55 On 25 December, the prefecture 52

53 54 55

Press Conference by Defense Minister Nakatani Gen, http://www.mod.go.jp/e/ pressconf/2015/10/151027.html/, 13 October 2015. “Tokyo overturns Futenma works plan,” Japan Times, 1 November 2015. “Kokoku sosho teiki, Onaga chiji kaiken,” Ryukyu shimpo, 26 December 2015. Kyodo news agency reports of high-level bureaucratic/judicial collusion through a secret planning group headed by Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide, and including Foreign Minister Kishida Fumio, Defense Minister Nakatani Gen, and Tezuka Makoto, head of the Justice Ministry’s Litigation Bureau and a specialist in “out-of-court” settlements, were carried in Chugoku Shimbun, Okinawa Times and other papers, on 24 March, under the heading (Chugoku Shimbun) “Henoko wakai no butaiura, Suga-shi shudo, gokuhi no chosei, sosho furi no kyu tenkai,”

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launched a counter-suit in the same Naha branch of the Fukuoka High Court, seeking to have the October ruling by the Minister set aside. By the end of 2015, state and prefectural authorities were thus suing each other over the same matters and in the same Naha court. The prefecture insisted it was a breach of its constitutional (Articles 92–95) entitlement to self-government for the state to impose the Henoko construction project on it unilaterally and by force. Onaga pointed to what he saw, on expert advice, as fatal flaws in the land reclamation approval process. In his view the state (the Okinawa Defense Bureau) was adopting a perverse and arbitrary reading of the law, abusing the Administrative Appeal Act by pretending to be just like a “private person” (ichishijin) complaining under a law specifically designed to allow individual citizens to seek redress against unjustified or illegal acts by governmental agencies. He noted that, while the state sought relief as if it were an aggrieved citizen it deployed its full powers and prerogatives as the state under the Local Self-Government Law to sweep aside prefectural self-government and assume the right to proxy execution of an administrative act (gyosei daishikko). The state, for its part, argued that base (and defense) matters were its prerogative, and that treaty obligations over-rode local self-government. Judge Tamiya rejected applications by the prefecture to call expert witnesses on military and defense matters (who might dispute the need for a Marine Corps presence in Okinawa) or on the environment or environmental assessment law (who might challenge the compatibility of Okinawa’s unique bio-diversity with large-scale reclamation and militarization). His court showed strong, even exceptional, interest in one matter in particular: securing an explicit statement from Governor Onaga that he would abide by whatever in due course it might rule.56 Wakai/Conciliation, 2016

As the flurry of writs and interrogatories continued, and a tense and sometimes violent confrontation continued between state powers and

56

and taken up again later in articles or editorials. For a convenient resume, Kihara Satoru, Ari no hitokoto – “Wakai no butaiura – Abe seiken to saibancho ga gokuhi ni sesshoku?” Ari no hitokoto, 25 March 2016. “Dai shikko sosho dai yon kai koto benron,” Ryukyu shimpo, 16 February 2016. See also discussion in Kihara Satoru, “Henoko saiban judai kyokumen (2) ‘mizukara torikesu’ wa riteki hanshin koi,” Ari no hitokoto, 17 February 2016.

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protesting citizens at the reclamation/construction site, it was hard to imagine where ground for compromise might be found. Yet that is precisely what Chief Justice Tamiya ordered when, on 29 January 2016, he advised the disputing parties to consider an out-of-court settlement. He began with the following exhortation:57 “At present the situation is one of confrontation between Okinawa and the Government of Japan. So far as the cause of this is concerned, before any consideration of which is at fault both sides should reflect that it should not be like this. Under the 1999 revision to the Local Autonomy Law it was envisaged that the state and regional public bodies would serve their respective functions as independent administrative bodies in an equal, cooperative relationship [italics added]. That is especially desirable in the performance of statutory or entrusted matters. The present situation is at odds with the spirit of this revised law. Instead, if the issue continues to be contested before the courts, and even if the state wins the present judicial action, hereafter it may be foreseen that the reclamation license might be rescinded or that approval of changes accompanying modification of the design would become necessary, and that the courtroom struggle would continue indefinitely. Even then there could be no guarantee that it would be successful. In such a case, as the Governor’s wide discretionary powers come to be recognized, the risk of defeat is high. And, even if the state continued to win, the works are likely to be considerably delayed. On the other hand, even if the prefecture wins, if it turns out that the state would not ask for Futenma return because it insists that Henoko construction is the only way forward, then it is inconceivable that Okinawa by itself could negotiate with the US and secure Futenma’s return.”

Judge Tamiya went on to rebuke and warn the state that, unless it fundamentally changed its strategy, it was heading towards defeat. Stressing the “equal and cooperative” relationship of national and prefectural governments, he urged the parties to “conciliate,” offering two alternatives, “basic” and “provisional.” Under the “provisional” plan the state would stop site works, and the parties open talks towards a satisfactory resolution (enman kaiketsu) pending outcome of a judicial determination, which both parties would respect and implement. If the talks failed to achieve a solution, the government would then file a different, less 57

Major documents (in Japanese) are to be found on the Okinawa prefecture home page, including both the 29 January conciliation proposal and the 4 March agreement.

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legally forceful type of lawsuit to verify the legality of the permit withdrawal. Under the “basic” plan Okinawa would reverse its withdrawal of the reclamation permit in exchange for the Japanese government opening negotiations with the US to have the new base “either returned to Japan or converted into a joint military-civilian airport at some point within thirty years from the time it becomes operational.” There was nothing conciliatory or amicable about either option. The inclusion of provisos for the defendant [prefecture] and the plaintiff [the state] to cooperate in the reclamation and subsequent operation [of the base] meant that this plan was predicated on the contested base at Henoko actually being built and provided to the Marine Corps, probably until at least the year 2045 (or indeed much longer, because there could be no guarantee as to how the Government of the United States would respond to any Japanese request at such a remote future date). One commentator, a retired judge, noted: “The success or failure of diplomatic negotiation with the United States is contingent on the cooperation of a third party, namely the United States. In other words, the paragraph does not describe something that the Japanese government has the authority to execute freely. Thus it fails to adhere to the requisites of a term of settlement, and thus the settlement proposal as a whole lacks validity from a legal standpoint.”58

On 4 March, as directed by Tamiya, the parties came to an “out-ofcourt” or “amicable” (wakai) settlement.59 It did not conform exactly to either of his January formulae. Site works were halted, both parties withdrew their existing suits under the Administrative Appeals Act and the state agreed to ask the prefecture under Article 25 of the Local Autonomy Act to cancel the order cancelling the reclamation license and agree to the matter being referred to the Central and Local Government Disputes Management Council in the event of its declining. This five-member Council, set up in 2000 under the government’s Department of General Affairs, has only twice in the intervening years been called upon to adjudicate a dispute, and on neither occasion both matters of relatively minor importance – had it issued any ruling 58

59

Nakasone Isamu, “Henoko” The ‘amicable settlement’,” in “‘Ceasefire’ on Oura Bay” op. cit. Chiji koshitsu Henoko shin kichi kensetsu mondai taisakuka, “Wakai joko,” 4 March 2016.

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against the government. Tamiya’s court saw such a suit as more appropriate to the formally equal relationship between the parties than the execution-by-proxy suit that the Abe government had chosen. The parties would discuss and seek “satisfactory resolution” pending the final outcome of judicial proceedings, and both would then abide by whatever outcome emerged. Judge Tamiya combined formal, procedural critique of the Abe government with support for its case, evident in this recommendation of a “solution” that involved construction of the very base that Okinawans were determined to stop. The barb in the “Amicable Agreement” was the superficially innocuous “sincerity” provision eventually incorporated in Paragraph 9, designed to remove any possible further recourse to the courts once the Supreme Court gave its decision. It read: “The complainant and other interested parties and the defendant reciprocally pledge that, after the judgment in the suit for cancellation of the rectification order becomes final, they will immediately comply with that judgment and carry out procedures in accord with the ruling and its grounds, and also that thereafter they will mutually cooperate and sincerely respond to the spirit of the ruling.”60

Challenged in the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly on 8 March 2016 as to what this commitment to “cooperate and sincerely respond to the spirit of the ruling” meant, Governor Onaga explained his understanding that, although his October 2015 order might thereby be cancelled, and the Nakaima license restored, in respect of all other matters he would make “appropriate judgement in accord with the law.”61 He did not go into detail, but it would seem to mean that, even if defeated in court, he could still resort to his other sanction – rescission (tekkai) of the Nakaima reclamation license. It implied that he could, and evidently would, refuse or obstruct requests from the state for detailed adjustments to the reclamation plan or engineering design. The 4 March “Amicable Settlement,” shifting the government case against Okinawa from the Administrative Appeals Act where its position was procedurally weak to the Local Government Act 60

61

The tortuous prose of this Article 9 confirmed several courtroom oral exchanges to the same effect. Onaga was repeatedly asked for assurances. “Will you abide by the judgement?” to which he replied, repeatedly “Shitagau” (I will follow it.). “Chiji, haiso demo kengen koshi, Henoko zesei shiji, keiso-i ni uttae e,” Ryukyu shimpo, 9 March 2016.

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where it was stronger, was drawn up and agreed in accord with court directives, so it was neither “out-of-court” nor, as it turned out, a “settlement,” since, no sooner had it been reached, with the government promising “discussions aimed at satisfactory resolution,” than Prime Minister Abe insisted anew that Henoko was “the only option,” implying that there was nothing to negotiate but Okinawa’s surrender.62 Just three days after agreeing to engage in discussions, and without so much as a preliminary meeting, MLITT Minister Ishii (for the government) sent Governor Onaga a formal request that he retract his cancellation of the Oura Bay reclamation license (i.e. that he restore the license granted by Nakaima in December 2013). It was exactly as prescribed under Paragraph 3 of the agreement, committing the parties to proceed in accord with Article 245 of the Local Autonomy Law, but it was plainly at odds with the prescription under Paragraph 8: that they negotiate. “Until such time as a finalized court judgement on the proceedings for cancellation of the rectification order is issued, the plaintiff and other interested parties and the defendant will undertake discussions aimed at ‘satisfactory resolution’ (enman kaiketsu) of the Futenma airfield return and the current [Henoko] reclamation matter.”

On 14 March, Governor Onaga responded. He pointed out that the Government had given no reason for its request and therefore his cancellation order could not be seen as a breach of the law.63 So he refused, referring to Ishii’s act as “an illegal intervention by the state,”64 and submitted the matter to the Disputes Management Council. It was, he said, a “pity” that the government had seen fit to issue such a Rectification Order immediately after entering the Amicable Agreement. The Disputes Management Council, as noted above, was an unlikely avenue for resolution of a major dispute between national and regional governments especially since it had abstained from doing so just months earlier, in December 2015, without so much as a statement of its reasons. 62

63

64

Reiji Yoshida, “Tokyo settles lawsuits, halts landfill at Henoko,” Japan Times, 4 March 2016. “Ken, keiso-i ni fufuku moshide ‘zesei shiji’ no torikeshi kankoku motome,” Ryukyu shimpo, 14 March 2016. “Henoko isetsu, keiso-shori i ni shinsa moshide hasso, Okinawa ken,” Asahi shimbun, 14 March 2016.

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While the national government insisted there was no alternative to Henoko construction, Onaga told the Disputes Resolution Council that the project was “a monumental idiocy likely to cause a treasure of humanity to vanish from the earth.”65 There was little or no room for compromise between the prefecture’s argument that the Nakaima consent to reclamation was wrongful because it failed to meet the requirements of the Reclamation Act and the state’s argument that reclamation was within its powers because it had exclusive responsibility for defense and foreign relations. The Council, however, on 17 June 2016 delivered an astonishing judgement: unanimously, it refused to rule on the legitimacy of MLITT Minister Ishii’s March order to the Okinawan Governor. The panel head, Kobayakawa Mitsuo, told a press conference: “We thought issuing either a positive or a negative judgement on the rectification order would not be beneficial in helping the state and local governments create desirable relations.”66

The panel lamented the “continuing undesirable” state of relations between state and prefecture, and urged “sincere discussions” to reach agreement.67 Since it issued no ruling, it meant that Governor Onaga’s cancellation order remained in place, and that site works could not be resumed. In that sense it might be seen as a victory for the prefecture. But the underlying problem remained: if a Commission especially set up to decide on disputes between national and regional governments could not resolve them, who or what could? Speed Trial, 2016

With the door thus closed by the Disputes Management Council, on 22 July 2016 the national government filed a fresh suit with the Naha branch of the Fukuoka High Court (i.e. Judge Tamiya’s court), seek65

66

67

Shin kichi ‘sodai na guko,’ chiji, keiso-i de umetate hihan, kuni ‘shonin ni kashi nai’,” Ryukyu shimpo, 23 April 2016. “Panel refrains from supporting Okinawa in base relocation spat,” Mainichi shimbun, 18 June 2016. “Keiso-i tekihi handan sezu, jichi o kobamu kuni e no keikoku da,” Ryukyu shimpo, 18 June 2016. For documents from the hearings, see Okinawa prefecture home page: http://www.pref.okinawa.lg.jp/site/chijiko/henoko/

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ing a ruling that the Okinawan government comply with the MLITT minister’s order and amend (reverse) its revocation of permission for landfill work on Oura Bay. As before, the government rested its case on the grounds of foreign affairs and defense policy it had advanced in the previous hearings. It turned its back on the conciliation process Tamiya had ordered in January and on the Disputes Council’s call for “sincere negotiations.” Its position that there was no alternative to Henoko construction and therefore nothing to negotiate bordered on contempt of court. As the Asahi Shimbun noted in March, the Abe government’s actions: “Suggest the arrogance that comes from regarding Okinawa as an inferior, despite the High Court’s statement that the central government and all local governments are ‘equals’.”68

As for Okinawa, through its Governor and its Prefectural Assembly, its parliament, and through repeated mass gatherings of its citizens, as well as through its panel of lawyers in the Naha court, it made clear that it accepted, indeed embraced, the principle of equality enunciated by Tamiya and that, as an equal, it ruled out any new base construction on its territory. Governor Onaga insisted (5 August 2016) that he had exercised his authority properly and that there was no reason why he should submit to a contrary, improper “rectification” directive from the state. At issue, he insisted, were “fundamentals of regional self-government and by extension fundamentals of democracy.”69 Tamiya adopted an extraordinary “speed trial” schedule. From issue of the writs on 22 July there were just two open days of hearings (5 and 19 August), the prefecture’s request to call eight expert witnesses (including Mayor Inamine of Nago City), was summarily dismissed and Onaga himself repeatedly asked only to confirm that he would obey the ruling of the court (a highly irregular query).70 On 16 September 2016, the Naha Branch of the Fukuoka High Court upheld the state’s claims in all particulars and ruled that Okinawa’s Governor was 68

69

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“Abe looks down nose at Okinawa despite court’s advice on issue,” Asahi Shimbun, 10 March 2016. “Okinawa, Henoko sosho, chiji ‘zesei shiji ukeru iwarenai’,” NHK News web, 5 August 2016. Matsunaga Kazuhiro, quoted in “Henoko, iho kakunin sosho, Okinawa ken wa zenmen-teki ni arasou shisei, jokoku fukamaru ugoki mo,” Okinawa taimusu, 20 August 2016.

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in breach of the law by his cancellation (in July 2015) of the reclamation license on Oura Bay issued by his predecessor almost two years earlier. Okinawa prefecture lodged an appeal, but three months later (20 December) the Supreme Court brusquely dismissed it, having refused to hear any witnesses. Onaga was not formally required to do so by the judgement, but he quickly cancelled his cancellation order, whereupon the state began sending in to the Camp Schwab site a daily convoy of trucks carrying construction equipment and materials. Site works resumed after a hiatus of nearly one year and on 25 April the government contractors began depositing on the Henoko beach the first large sacks of rock designed to be the foundation of the sea-wall. Ever since the Supreme Court held in the Sunagawa Case in 1959 that the judiciary would not pass judgement on matters pertaining to the security treaty with the US because of their being “highly political,” the Treaty has in effect been elevated above the constitution and immunized from any challenge at law. By the time the Supreme Court turned its attention to Henoko in 2016, that principle was deep in its DNA. The court proceedings were at odds with the Tamiya advice to both parties in January 2016 as to the significance of the 1999 revision to the Local Autonomy Law, whereby state and regional public bodies were to carry out their respective functions “in an equal, cooperative relationship” [italics added]. Former Okinawa University president and specialist in environmental law Sakurai Kunitoshi conveyed the view of many Okinawans when he declared that the 2016 Supreme Court decision was “appalling,” showing: “That it was not a custodian of the constitution, that the local self-government law was nothing but a scrap of paper and that the Japan-US Security Treaty was superior to the constitution.”71

State of Play, 2017–2018

Despite his submission to the court in 2017, Onaga insisted that he was sticking to his pledge to not allow construction of the new base. Standing before the protesters at the gate to Camp Schwab in 71

Sakurai Kunitoshi, interviewed, “Kireme nai sochi ronjiyo,” Ryukyu shimpo, 26 December 2016.

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March 2017, and again before a mass protest rally (of 45,000 people) in Naha in August 2017, he declared that he would “certainly” and “determinedly” use his long-delayed weapon and rescind (tekkai) the reclamation license. But he gave no indication as to when he would do so,72 and when 2017 came to an end he was still protesting that he was “thinking about” issuing such an order at some point during his remaining 12 months in office.73 Some who had believed in him in 2014 or 2015 found their faith harder to maintain in 2017 and 2018. The public pressure on Onaga to do as he repeatedly promised and “rescind” the reclamation permit was palpable. While still reserving this unused “rescission” weapon, on 24 July 2017, the Okinawa prefectural government filed a fresh suit in the Naha District Court demanding a halt to the works.74 The prefecture rested its case on the Fisheries Regulation Law of 2012, under which consent of the Governor was required for any alteration to specified fisheries zones. Such permit had been sought from, and granted by, (then) Governor Nakaima in August 2014 for rock and coral crushing in Oura Bay, but it expired in March 2017. Knowing that the prefecture would refuse if asked to renew it, the state declared it no longer necessary. It argued that the Governor’s or prefectural rights over the Bay were extinguished when the Henoko fisheries cooperative abandoned its fishing rights in the Bay in 2013. It had indeed then voted 94:2 to give up those fishing rights in return for 600 million yen compensation.75 However, the prefecture argued that it (the Governor) possessed a general entitlement over the coastal region going beyond the rights attaching to the cooperative. It is also the case, although it was not part of the prefecture’s case to the court in 2017, that the cooperative’s 2013 consent was problematic because many of the Henoko fishermen agreed only reluctantly to accept compensation for reclamation in return for abandoning the 72

73

74

75

“Umetate shonin tekkai e, Onaga chiji ‘kanarazu’, ketsui futatabi, kenmin taikai,” Ryukyu shimpo, 13 August 2017. http://ryukyushimpo.jp/news/entry-554729. html/ “Onaga chiji, saishutsuba ni furezu, Henoko umetate no tekkai wa ninki-chu ni,” Ryukyu shimpo, 22 December 2017 Okinawa prefecture, “Chiji koshitsu Henoko shin kichi kensetsu mondai taisakuka, “http://www.pref.okinawa.jp/site/chijiko/henoko/documents/01_sojogaiyou.pdf, 24 July 2017. See Urashima Etsuko, “A Nago Citizen’s Opinion on the Henoko Marine Base Construction Project,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 25 November 2013.

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sea because they felt unable to continue making a living in the face of government determination to press ahead with the base construction. The Okinawan fishing industry had long suffered from red soil runoff pollution from the bases and from rampant development policies. Local newspapers quoted opinions among the participants such as “We cannot fish because of US exercises,” “If the country determines something, how can we resist?” and “It resembles the situation in which [in the Battle of Okinawa] people were collectively driven to group suicide.” Furthermore, five days after the Henoko meeting, a larger meeting, attended by 150 members of the fishing Cooperatives of neighboring Ginoza, Kin, and Ishikawa (total members: 316) demanded immediate cancellation of the construction plan.76 Whatever the Naha Court might determine about the law on this, the government case that it could proceed to reclaim the Bay for base construction without prefectural or city consent was a design to evade local, self-governing constitutional democracy. The Prefecture's July 2017 Naha District Court suit, 5th in the series that began in 2015, was brusquely dismissed in February 2018. The longer the judicial proceedings drag on, the closer the site works come to some point of irreversibility.77 Some within the base opposition camp suggest that it is not that Governor Onaga wants the new base to be built, he does indeed want to stop it, but not to the extent of fighting against the national government to do so. If possible, he would like the national government itself to call a halt, out of consideration for his views and for the sentiment of the people of Okinawa.78 While he kept promising tekkai/rescission, Onaga had other, lesser options for trying to halt seawall construction. Each revision to the design that affected city or prefecture required consent, and either Governor Onaga or Nago City Mayor Inamine (or both) could simply say no. Mayor Inamine, whose jurisdiction included both construction sites, had already caused significant delay by his refusal of permission for works to divert the Mija River outlet to Oura Bay (one of many late “adjustments” to the plan) and refusal of permission for a works 76 77

78

“Ginoza nado gyokyo, Henoko isetsu ni hantai,” Okinawa taimusu, 17 March 2013. “‘Gansho hasai sashitome sosho’ wa yugai mueki, sono yottsu no riyu,” Kihara Satoru, Ari no hitokoto, 25 July 2017. Such would seem to be the position adopted by Nakasone Isamu “Rondan: Ken no gansho hasai sashitome teiso – meikai na sentaku datta no ka,” Ryukyu shimpo, 4 August 2017, and Takara Sachika, “‘Tekkai’ shincho Chiji ni gimon,” Okinawa taimusu, 31 August 2017.

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yard to be sited in Henoko fishing port. As for prefectural authorities, under an ordinance adopted by the Okinawan Prefectural Assembly in 2015, they could, if they so chose, stop and inspect every truckload of soil or sand being imported from outside the prefecture (and at least in principle forbid entry) because of the fear of pathogens (including Argentine ants) being introduced into the island’s environment.79 Other ordinances empower the prefecture to protect important “natural monuments” in Oura Bay such as hermit crabs, and historically important cultural relics era such as “anchor stones” dating back to the pre-modern Ryukyu era.80 Yet Onaga and his prefectural government showed reluctance to have recourse to such measures. The law had never envisaged the carrying out of a massive construction project in the teeth of local non-cooperation. The Henoko works also encounter serious design problems. Civic applications under freedom of information secured evidence that the state’s engineering design was being repeatedly and substantially revised. Both the technical difficulties of reclaiming deep (60-plus meters) of the Bay and the stubbornness of the civic resistance seem to have been beyond the state’s anticipation. Three “works yards” adjacent to the construction site at Henoko and part of the original design had to be abandoned in recognition of the fact that Nago Mayor Inamine would never agree to them. Inamine’s successor as mayor might be inclined to approve but he had no mandate to do so and knew that opposition in the city to base works ran deep. Worries over the possibility of site subsidence or liquefaction called for the state’s contractors to need to undertake “boring surveys” of 19 sites not part of the original design, and the attrition caused by the daily Schwab gate civic protest continued to cause significant delays and cost overruns. In five months the seawall that was supposed to stretch for 300 meters reached only 100, ceasing before the Bay’s sudden plunge into very deep waters.81

79 80

81

See Gavan McCormack, “To the courts! To the Streets,” op. cit. The discovery of 17 culturally significant earthen and stoneware objects in the Oura Bay site vicinity was announced in November 2015. “To the courts! To the streets!” ibid. “Kisha kaisetsu, Henoko chakko kara 5 kagetsu,” Ryukyu Asahi Hoso, http://www. qab.co.jp/nws/2017092794932.html/

Chapter Four

Okinawa – State Violence and Civic Resistance ™

As the Henoko problem during 2015–2017 was repeatedly referred to the judiciary, Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga insisted that Japan was a law-governed state, a hochi kokka.1 But it was not clear that Abe’s Japan did in fact enjoy the division of powers and independence of the judiciary that are the hallmark of a modern, constitutional state. While the citizenry resorted non-violently to exercise of what they believed to be their fundamental, last resort right to civil disobedience only after exhausting all legal and constitutional steps to oppose the base project, they faced the full panoply of state force, including the threat of the special criminal law and punitive detention as in the Yamashiro case. Coastguard and Riot Police flaunted violence, dragging away protesters (many of whom are in their 70s and 80s), dunking canoeists in the sea (or dumping them on remote shores), pinning down one protest ship captain till he lost consciousness, and on a number of occasions causing injuries to protesters requiring hospital treatment.2 A ten-year encampment at the Henoko fishing harbor saw off the first design for a floating heliport base in 2005. In the second, continuing, phase the core protest camp shifted a couple of kilometers from the fishing harbor to the Camp Schwab base gate. From July 2014, That “Camp Schwab gate” site became the main access route to the construction site. This phase of the protest now in its fourth year. 1 2

“Kuni ‘hochi kokka’ de yusaburi,” editorial, Ryukyu shimpo, 25 October 2016 Details on this and other cases in ‘All Japan’ versus ‘All Okinawa’ – Abe Shinzo’s military first-ism,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 16 March 2015. On Shimabukuro Fumiko, “Henoko 85-sai josei kega, ichiji ishiki ushinau,” Ryukyu shimpo, 22 November 2014. 101

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On an average day, the protest group at “The Gate” may be between sixty and one hundred or so-strong, but often many more, especially on days when core protesters are supplemented by “All Okinawa” chartered buses bringing volunteers from throughout the island. The impromptu exchange of experience and ideas, interspersed with performances of song or dance, grew during 2016 to such extent that the gathering declared itself “Henoko University” and organized a series of “lectures” by activists and scholars. From March 2016, during the nine month lull in Oura Bay works, the focus of struggle shifted from Henoko to the N-1 entrance gate to the Marine Corps’ Northern Training Area in the Yambaru forest (Takae hamlet, population: 150), about 40 kilometers away. Originally designated for return “within five to seven years,” it was actually not until twenty years later, in December 2016, that it did take place. As at Henoko, Takae “reversion” meant substitution and military upgrading, not simply handover. Under the 1996 agrement, the Japanese state was to construct six new helipads for the Marine Corps to replace those located within the land to be returned to Okinawa. There were to be substantial structures, 75 meters in diameter and fed by access roads built by clear-felling forest. When the detailed plan was settled, the Village Assembly unanimously protested against it (February and July 2006) and set up a roadside protest “sit-in” camp the following year. As it had done at Henoko, the government proceeded to impose its agenda by crushing the opposition, resorting to various devices including “SLAPP”-type restraining court orders.3 An environmental impact study was conducted (2007– 2012) but, like that for Henoko, it was conducted by the contractors themselves and was neither independent nor scientific. One crucial detail – that the “helipads” were to be used by “Osprey,” was kept from the public until the process was over. When two “Osprey pads” were completed and handed over to the Marine Corps in February 2015, the Higashi Village Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution declaring that the construction contravened the wishes of the local community and banning US aircraft from using them. Days later, on 25 February, the Osprey began training flights. From 22 July 2016, as the construction process accelerated, the government stepped up its assault on the people of Takae, creating 3

McCormack and Norimatsu, op. cit., pp. 166–172

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in effect a “law-less” zone.4 Its forces periodically swept aside protest tents and vehicles and closed or limited traffic on Highway 70.5 Where the original (2006) plan had been to build one helipad at a time so as to minimize damage to the forest, henceforth all four that remained were to be built simultaneously, cutting the estimated time for works completion from 13 to 6 months. It meant quadrupling the daily number of trucks employed in delivering materials and equipment, and sending major police reinforcements from mainland Japan to help stave off the Okinawan opposition. As Ryukyu shimpo pointed out, it was the sort of mobilization of force with which a major assault on a yakuza gangster headquarters might be launched.6 For the people carrying on the resistance, mostly elderly, the experience of being overwhelmed by state force, outnumbered roughly 5:1, was “akin to martial law” as novelist Medoruma Shun put it.7 It would be unimaginable that such confronation between state power and the democratic citizenry could happen anywhere else in Japan than Okinawa. In December 2016 the 4,000 hectares of forest was “returned”, by which time the Osprey landing pads had been completed and handed over in return. Officially, the process of “reversion” is one of “burden reduction,” but such is the level of concentration in Okinawa of US military facilities that reversion of half of the Northern Training Area merely reduced the Okinawan proportion of American base land from 74 to 71 per cent. Far from there being any sense of “reduction” for residents of the vicinity, the experience of the people of Takae was of life made virtually unbearable. The Osprey flew roughly twice as often as the CH-46 they replaced,8 ignored the agreed 150 meter height limitation and flew as low as 60 meters over the village,9 and became especially feared because of their emergency landings, high-risk night parachute drops, refuel4

5

6

7 8

9

“Ho keishi no chakurikutai koji ‘hochi kokka no na ni ataisezu,” Ryukyu shimpo, 2 August 2016. Watase Natsuhiko and Morizumi Takashi, “Kyukyu hanso tsuzuku kogi genba,” Shukan kinyobi, 5 August 2016, pp. 42–43. Ryota Nakamura, “Riot squad sent to subdue Takae protesters similar in scale to that sent to eradicate yakuza gangsters,” Ryukyu shimpo, 18 July 2016. Quoted in Letman, op. cit. “Chakurikutai senko teikyo, hazubeki taibei juzoku da, editorial, Ryukyu shimpo, 19 February 2015. “Osupurei kunren jissai wa 60m, seifu setsumei 150m,” Ryukyu shimpo, 14 February 2017.

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ing and equipment hauling exercises. Over the five years of Osprey deployment from 2012, the frequency of noise in excess of 60 decibels (roughly the noise level of a busy city street) increased 12-fold.10 In 2016 alone, in the vicinity of Takae Elementary School 60 decibels was exceeded on 6,887 occasions.11 Increasingly night training flights were conducted, especially terrifying when conducted without lights.12 When the rare and protected resident of the Yambaru forest, the Noguchigera woodpecker, began to die mysteriously, locals suspected that the avian nervous system too (like the human) could not cope with the disturbance to their world brought by the Osprey.13 The US military enjoyed priority over all the forest dwellers, not only human but animal, avian, insect or botanical, and so the once peaceful, bio-diverse, forested environment became a virtual war zone. The Okinawa Prefectural Assembly (addressing the Takae construction for the first time) adopted a resolution calling for immediate halt to the works.14 A local newspaper conducted a door-to-door survey of opinion among local residents and found opposition running at 80 per cent, with not one soul in favor.15 As the bitter contest continued, costs skyrocketed. The 613 million yen budgeted for construction of the Osprey-pads blew out by more than fifteen times to 9,400 million (roughly $80 million) before the works were “completed” and handed over in December 2016. Likewise the initial budget of 5.9 billion yen for preliminary construction works at Henoko was raised ten times over eighteen months to 13.9 billion, an increase of 2.3 times, with policing the largest item at roughly 70 per cent of the total.16 When the summer rains came at Takae in 2017, 10

11

12

13

14

15

16

“Seifu no kotoba to gyakko, Beigunki no zatsuon 5 nen de 12-bai, Okinawa, Takae, Osupurei haibi go,” Okinawa taimusu, 4 October 2017 “Shin kichi kensetsu ‘Henoko’ zehi aratamete tou,” editorial, Ryukyu shinbun, 19 October 2017. Night flights increased to 400 during the month of June 2016, up by 8-fold over 2014. (Okinawa Defense Bureau, quoted in Jon Letman, “Fighting to save a remote Okinawan forest,” Honolulu Civil Beat, 12 August 2016). “Higashi-son de Noguchigera mado ni shototsushi, kotoshi yon-wa me,” Oknawa taimusu, 29 October 2014. Okinawa Kengikai, “Beigun hokubu kunrenjo heripaddo kensetsu ni kansuru ikensho,” 21 July 2016. “Chakurikutai hantai, Takae 80%, sansei kaito wa zero, Honshi ga 2-ku jumin anketo,” Ryukyu shimpo, 3 August 2016. Mori Takao, “Okinawa, Henoko, Takae kono hantoshi amari no tokuchoteki doko,” Kagakuteki shakaishugi, September 2017.

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the fill began to leak and flow into the neighboring sea, polluting it and requiring further, remedial work.17 But since the state treated Henoko and Takae as colonial construction projects carried out in hostile territory, neither environmental impact nor cost warranted serious consideration. Following a series of crashes and forced landings around the world, in December 2016 one of the Futenma-based Ospreys crashed into the sea off Okinawa’s north shore near Nago city. On 5 August 2017 another crashed, killing its crew of three, off the northeast coast of Australia. Japanese Foreign Minister Kono Taro asked for Osprey flights to be grounded but was brushed aside and after a two day hiatus, the remaining Futenma Osprey resumed their place in Okinawan skies.18 Even the Okinawan branch of the national ruling coalition party, Komeito, protested sharply to the Okinawan Defense Bureau, calling for the Osprey to be suspended and describing it as “shameful” for Japan as a state to be thus rudely ignored.19 Two days after the crash, the remaining Futenma Osprey (initially 24, now reduced to 22) resumed their place in Okinawan skies. On 11 October 2017 a “conventional” Marine Corps helicopter (CH-53) crash-landed in flames on a farm in Takae hamlet. On 7 Dcember 2017, a Marine Corps helicopter part fell onto the roof of a pre-school and on 13 December the window of a CH53E helicopter fell off and crashed into Futenma No 2 Elementary School during class, miraculously not hitting any children. A petititon, signed by a representative cross-section of Okinawan society, demanded “immediate and complete termination of all flight operafions at USMC Futenma Base.”20 Early in the New Year of 2018, two more incidents occurred: helicopters forced to make an emergency landings, first on 6 January on the beach of Igei Island (Uruma City) and then on 8 January beside a tourist hotel in Yomitan Village. Neither caused injury, but they added to the sense of fear and insecurity. The Okinawan media pointed to the discrepancies betweeen US base restrictions in countries such as Germany and Italy, whose governments enforce strict condi17 18

19

20

Mori, ibid. “‘Osupurei go-oki de tsuiraku’ hiko teishi, kizen to semare,” editorial, Okinawa taimusu, 8 August 2017. “Komeito, ‘kokka to shite do sho mo nai’ suiraku kogi de hihan,” Ryukyu shimpo, 8 August 2017. Gabe Masaaki and others, “Petititon to demand closure of MC Futenma base,” 22 December 2017.

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tions on base use, and Japan where the US wish appears to be treated as the Japanese government’s command.21 PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE

As the government chafed under the continuing delays in its projects to construct the bases at Henoko and Takae, it sought to allocate blame. It chose as target of its outrage 64-year old Okinawa Prefecture retired public servant Yamashiro Hiroji. Yamashiro was renowned as master choreographer of the resistance, conducting the assembly of protesting citizens day after day, month after month, in song, dance, and debate, irritating and outraging the servants of the state by his wit and nonviolence. He became Japan’s “public enemy number one” so to speak.22 Yamashiro, like many others during the suspension of works at Henoko under the court-ordered conciliation process, shifted the focus of his protest to Takae. On 17 October 2016, he was detained during a brief flurry. Initially, the prosecutors sought an order for his detention for having been caught “red-handed” inflicting damage to property (cutting a strand of barbed wire to gain access to the construction site). Two other charges were later added: “forcible obstruction of public business” (Yamashiro and others were alleged to have piled up 1,400 concrete blocks in January 2016 to try to obstruct entry to Camp Schwab base) and in “shaking [a contractor] by the shoulder causing bruising.”23 Of the three charges, the wire cutting caused damage estimated at about $20 that was quickly repaired. The concrete blocks were swiftly removed by police and caused zero obstruction, so that the only potentially serious charge was that of assault causing injury. In the context of daily melees, continuing over many months and in all weathers, and 21

22

23

“Goi yaburi zentei no unyo, Nihon seifu no shisei ni k-in,” editorial, Ryukyu shimpo, 6 January 2018. For the Yamashiro case, Gavan McCormack and Sandi Aritza, “The Japanese state versus the people of Okinawa: Rolling arrests and punitive detention,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 5 January 2017. http://apjjf.org/2017/02/ McCormack.html/, and for Yamashiro’s own account, Gavan McCormack and the Asia-Pacific Jounal Report, “There will be no stopping the Okinawa resistance – an interview with Yamashiro Hiroji,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 1 August 2017. http://apjjf.org/2017/15/McCormack.html/ “Activists protesting US base relocation in Okinawa arrested,” Mainichi Shimbun, 30 November 2016.

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the overwhelming preponderance of force on the side of the state and its contractors, premeditation seemed improbable, while the number of protesters who had suffered bruising or other injury by being summarily grabbed, beaten, detained, thrown aside, in some cases leading to hospitalization, was not known but was certainly greater than the one upon whose bruises the court deliberated in 2017.24 Yamashiro was held, treated as a suspected terrorist, for five months in solitary confinement, denied repeated requests for bail, forbidden visitors (including his family), subject to what can only be described as deliberate humiliation (forced to submit to “body searches” twice daily), interrogated daily (for at least the first half of that time) and, despite his serious illness being well-known, refused even the right to take delivery of a pair of socks while he was at the Nago police cell.25 Only after widespread protest did the authorities eventually relax that rule, but then only to allow one pair of socks, which had to be short and which he was forbidden to wear inside his cell. It was a trivialenough matter, but illustrative of a kind of bureaucratic sadism on the part of the state. One American specialist on Japanese law pointed out that Yamashiro’s prolonged detention contravened Japan’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (notably Articles 9, 14, and 15,26 which require release pending trial), In like vein, a group of Japanese criminal law specialists insisted that Yamashiro’s detention was “unlawful,” being inter alia a breach of Article 34 of the constitution banning lengthy detention without probable cause. If laws were broken at Henoko and at Takae, there is a strong prima facie case for thinking that the government, police and the Japan Coastguard were the guilty parties. The police and Coastguard mobilization to enforce a government construction project may well have been in breach 24

25

26

For a list of incidents of “Violence, Detention, and Arrests in Henoko, Okinawa in 2014–15,” see All Okinawa Council, et al., “Joint submission to United Nations, Human Rights Council, “Violation of freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly in Okinawa, Japan,” 11 December 2015, in Hideki Yoshikawa and Gavan McCormack, “Okinawa: NGO Appeal to the United Nations and to US military and government over base matters, December 2015 and December 2016,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, December 2016. “‘Kutsushita no sashiire mitomete’ ‘pantsu to issho’ Okinawa kenkei ni 100 nin ga uttae,” Okinawa taimusu, 12 December 2016. Lawrence Repeta, “The silencing of an anti-US base protester in Okinawa,” Japan Times, 4 January 2017.

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of the provisions of the Police Duties Execution Act and the Coastguard Act. The mobilization of SDF helicopters to transport construction equipment was probably counter to the Self Defense Law and the Coastguard Law lacked any provision that could justify the organ supposedly entrusted with the defense of Japan’s shores and bays in treating protesting canoeists and kayakers as enemies of the state. Yamashiro’s snipping of a strand of barbed wire seemed trivial when compared to the state’s clear felling without permit of an estimated 24,000 forest trees.27 Many of the trucks used by contractors for the state at Takae lacked license plates and were therefore in breach of Okinawan road traffic law. When riot police brought in from Osaka abused protesters as dojin and shinajin (natives or Chink/Chinese) the government refused to treat it as hate speech,28 and when Prime Minister Abe, opening the special session of the Diet in September 2016, conveyed special appreciation for the work being done by police and military personnel, he drew a standing ovation.29 Ultimately the state acts not as a responsible instrument of democratic rule but as an instrument of force at the disposal of government. LDP party chief Ishiba Shigeru expressed what was probably the shared view within government when he wrote of the burgeoning Okinawan protest movement in his blog (on 29 November 2013) that after all there was little difference in substance between vociferous demonstrators and terrorists.30 Abe’s government was intent on compelling the protest movement, both civic and institutional, to surrender by sowing despair. CIVIL SUITS

Okinawa-related civil suits too, based on constitutional principle, tend to be fruitless. Between 2002 and 2015, courts issued altogether 27

28

29

30

Details in Okinawan media, July-August 2016, See especially “Takae doji chakko mubo na keikaku wa akiraka ni,” Okinawa taimusu, 28 August 2016,”Heripaddo koki tanshuku, Nichibei ryo seifu wa mori mo kowasu no ka,” Okinawa taimusu, 29 August 2016 and (24,000 trees felled) “Letter of concern and request, Inscription of Yambaru forest as a world natural heritage site,” 1 December 2016, in Yoshikawa and McCormack, op. cit. “Cabinet: No need for Tsuruho to apologize over ‘dojin’ issue,” Asahi shimbun, 22 November, 2016. “Abe’s instruction of diet ovation for SDF criticized,” Japan Times, 27 September 2016. “Kussaku sagyo ni chakushu, mohaya ‘kyofu seiji’ da, banko chushi shi min-i o toe,” Ryukyu shimpo, editorial, 18 August 2014.

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seven judgments in the attempt to stop the intolerable levels of noise emanating from Futenma base, repeatedly accepting evidence (in the words of the Naha District Court in June 2015) that the 2,200 plaintiffs of Ginowan City did indeed suffer “mental distress, poor sleep, and disruption to their daily lives” from “serious and widespread” violations that “could not be defended on any ground of public interest” but refused the relief they sought of a stoppage of the pain. Monetary compensation was all the court was prepared to consider. It ordered victims be paid 754 million yen (approximately $9 million) compensation. Resident groups in the five municipalities in the vicinity of Kadena US Air Force base have launched three similar “noise” suits, in 1982– 1988, 2000–2009, and 2011–2017. In the last of them, 22,000 claimants were awarded damages of thirty billion yen (ca. $267 million).31 Noise levels not only did not abate but intensified, reaching in excess of 100 (well above standard comfort levels levels of 40 to 60), occasionally reaching a painful 113 (equivalent to being beside a helicopter) decibels in parts of Yomitan Village, Kadena City and Okinawa City.32 With the US Air Force planning to base “up to 24” especially loud F35-B stealth fighters at Kadena from 2018, those noise levels are bound to rise yet again. With residents of Okinawan towns and villages systematically deprived of the quality of life supposedly guaranteed them by the constitution by being subjected to high levels of stress and sleeplessness, or to suspension of classes in schools,33 the contrast with other US-allied states, which enforce strict noise control measures around US bases, is striking.34 As with Futenma, courts are ready to compensate, but claim they have no jurisdiction to order a stop to the nuisance or even a ban on night flights. In effect they concede that the US military is beyond and 31

32

33

34

“Hiko sashitome kikyaku,” Ryukyu shimpo, gogai, 23 February 2017. See also Kyodo, “Japanese government ordered to pay record damages in US base noise suit,” Japan Times, 23 February 2017. The Architectural Association of Japan classifies sound levels (so-on) ranging from 25 decibels (almost inaudible) to 140 (standing beside a jet engine, with 40 to 60 decibels as recommended livelihood level and a physical pain threshhold set at 130 decibels. “Kadena bakuon ka’ jumin no himei ga kikoeru,” editorial, Okinawa taimusu, 12 November 2017. “Goi yaburi zentei no unyo, nihon seifu no shisei ni kiin,” editorial, Ryukyu shimpo, 6 January 2018.

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above the law, and the government of Japan is complicit in enforcing its ongoing illegality and the accompanying suffering of its people. Responding to Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga, Ryukyu shimpo commented, “How could a government that enforces continuing illegality upon the citizens of one of its regions be considered a law-ruled state?”35 SECURITY

The role of “base island” long imposed on the Okinawan people by the US and Japanese governments has meant for them not just deprivation of sovereignty and territory but deprivation of personal security in the name of national security. Between the “reversion” of Okinawa to Japan in 1972 and 2015, by official count US forces and their dependents and civil employees had been responsible for 5,896 criminal incidents, one tenth of them (574) crimes of violence including rape. Indelibly etched on the Okinawan collective memory are not just the 1995 rape case but many others going back to the rape-murder of 6 year-old Yumikochan in 1955 and the crash of a fighter jet onto Miyamori Elementary School in 1959 (killing 17 people, including 11 children). Countless resolutions of protest over the years had been met with countless promises of better behavior. After the current phase of Okinawan protest was triggered by the rape case of 1995, at least a dozen or more reported cases of US-military rapes happened in Okinawa. Again, in April 2016 the rape and murder of a 20-year old Okinawan woman (to which an American ex-Marine base worker confessed) shocked, saddened, and outraged Okinawa. A protest and mourning meeting on 25 May adopted five demands (essentially the demands of the 2013 Kempakusho): drastic overall reduction of US bases, basic revision of the US-Japan SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement), closure and return of Futenma, withdrawal of Osprey, and abandonment of base construction at Henoko. Two days later the Prefectural Assembly made almost identical demands, but added that all Marine Corps bases and soldiers (i.e. not just Futenma but also the large, sprawling bases at Camp Schwab, Camp Hansen, and the Northern Training Area) should be closed and withdrawn from 35

“Futenma soon sosho, hochi kokka to ieru no ka,” Ryukyu shimpo, 12 June 2015. See also “Futenma soon sosho iho jotai o hochi suru na,” Okinawa taimusu, 12 June 2015

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the island. It was the first time for such a demand to issue from the prefecture’s parliament. Shortly after that, a prefectural mass meeting on 19 June brought together 65,000 mourning citizens in somber mood under a blazing 35 degree sun where they listened silently to the victim’s father ask for prefectural unity to demand withdrawal of all bases. Protesters declared the people’s anger “has gone beyond any limit.” A coalition of 16 organizations making up the “Okinawa Women Act against Military Violence” announced the same demand, for the withdrawal of all military bases and armed forces (thereby including also the massive US Air Force base at Kadena and Japan’s own Self-Defense Force units). By early 2017, Okinawan sentiment was reaching well beyond the “All Okinawa and Kempakusho 2013 demands with their exclusive focus on US bases and aircraft to demand the removal from Okinawa of all appurtenances of the military, whether American or Japanese.”36 Following the series of helicopter crashes and incidents noted above, late in 2017 Okinawans again began to mobilize to insist on the complete and unconditional closure of Futenma.37 STRUGGLE WITHOUT END

For two decades from 1996 the “irresistible force” of the nation state has confronted the “immovable object” of the Okinawan resistance. Never in modern Japanese history had the national government concentrated such effort on trying to bend the government and people of a region to its will. The project the “strong” state attempts to push through has been repeatedly delayed by the determined, non-violent resistance of the “weak” (Okinawa). The more Abe resorts to deceit, intimidation or violence, the more the resistance stiffens and the Okinawan demands widen and deepen. By refusing to listen to them, Abe pushes the relationship between state and prefecture towards open clash, weakens the US military ties that he is intent on strengthening, irritates the Pentagon he is committed to serving, and exposes Japan to the world as a state that in the name of “defense” and “security” denies basic democratic principle and human rights to the people of one of its prefectures. By any conventional reckoning, with his hands on the levers of state power Abe should long ago have been able to bring Okinawa to heel, 36 37

“Datsu gunji no seron keisei o,” Ryukyu shimpo, 23 April 2017. Gabe Masaaki and others, op. cit.

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crushing its motley and miniscule flotilla of canoes and kayaks and its army of resolutely non-violent citizens. Yet the contest continues. Twenty-two years have passed since Tokyo and Washington first promised Futenma return “within 5 to 7 years,” i.e. by 2003. In 2016, as the 20th anniversary of the original agreement passed, Admiral Harry Harris, Commander of US Pacific forces, told Congress that the likely completion and handover date would be fiscal year 2025.38 But he added that the situation at the Henoko site was not improving and that protest was “continuing to escalate.”39 Had he paid due attention to the problems associated with the reclamation (noted above) he would have had to stretch the handover date to mid-century. Because of the continuing Camp Schwab Gate-front protest and the growing chaos on the roads in the vicinity, the state late in 2017 shifted its strategy so as to commence delivery of construction materials by sea as well as by road.40 One shipload could carry the equivalent of 190 10-ton trucks,41 and if significant quantities of fill could be delivered by sea, from multiple ports across northern Okinawa, it would be much more difficult for citizens to mobilize effective protest. In June the Okinawa Defense Agency asked the prefectural authorities for permission to use the port facilities at the tiny hamlet of Oku (population: 174) in Kunigami village at the far northern point of Okinawa Island for unloading materials. The prefecture, after due consideration, consented in September, and delivery commenced in November. The issue of that permit seemed to many a plain breach of the Governor’s commitment to use “all means at my disposal” to prevent reclamation. Yamashiro Hiroji, probably best-known figure of the anti-base construction protest, declared that he found it necessary for the first time to oppose the prefectural government, demanding that the Governor confirm his anti-base construction pose by actions, and that he withdraw the permit for use of Oku port. Yamauchi Tokushin, one of Okinawa’s most respected “elders” (former mayor of Yomitan Village 38

39

40

41

Admiral Harry Harris, Commander-in-Chief US Pacific Forces, Congressional evidence quoted in “Beigun no honne, hirogaru hamon, Bei shireikan no Henoko isetsu okure hatsugen,” Okinawa taimusu, 3 March 2016. Quoted in Heianna Sumiyo, “Harisu Beigun shireikan ‘hantai undo kakudai shite iru’ Nakatani shi ni Henoko okure kenhien tsutatsu,” Okinawa taimusu, 25 February 2016. “Henoko shin kichi: ken, gogan henko de boeikyoku ni shokai, raigetsu kaito o yokyu,” Okinawa taimusu, 27 September 2017. “Kisha kaisetsu,” op. cit.

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and and national Diet member) said that it might be time for protesters to undertake a sit-in protest outside the prefectural offices.42 On 15 November, a defensive governor confronted his civic critics at the prefectural offices. He referred in deferential terms to the long civic protest (“for 1,000 days”) and to Yamashiro’s “illegal and wrongful’ treatment by the state, but he insisted that on a strict understanding of the relevant law (The Port and Harbor Act, 1950) and provided the prescribed procedures were observed, that he as governor had had no alternative but to consent. He insisted, however, that the prefectural complaint based on the Reclamation Law was a different matter.43 That suit would continue in the courts and he would still, at the appropriate moment, rescind the permit that underlay ongoing construction. It was a narrowly legalistic defense. Advantage was steadily accruing to the state and against the prefecture. As some pointed out, it was inconceivable that the Japanese state could ever be defeated in court.44 Disappointment spread, even in the ranks of All Okinawa, at the Governor who kept saying he would do “everything in my power” to stop Henoko construction while procrastinating about actually rescinding the reclamation permit and now had given de facto support for construction by endorsing the use of Oku port for delivery of materials. The people of Oku Ward unanimously adopted a resolution calling on him to cancel the Oku Port use license.45 In December, similar permits were issued for use of the facilities at Nakagusuku and Motobu ports. The Governor was said to be “contemplating” (sic.) a “major decision over matters including the possible cancellation of the harbor use permit.”46 On 26 December 2017, five years into the Abe government’s second term and three into Onaga’s prefectural governorship, Okinawan ciizens celebrated the 5,000th day (since 19 April 2004) of the Henoko tent protest.47 Their struggle, however, was becoming increasingly des42

43

44 45 46

47

“Yamashiro gicho, chiji o hihan, shin kichi zairyo kaiun ninka de,” Ryukyu shimpo, 11 November 2017. “Oki minato kara no kaijo hannyu ‘arata na jitai ga dete kite iru’ Onaga Takeshi okinawa kenchiji, burasagari kaiken,” Ryukyu shimpo, 15 November 2017. Sato Manabu, “Ampo no jijitsu hasshin o,” Ryukyu shimpo, 24 November 2017. “Oku minato shiyo hantai kumin ketsugi,” Ryukyu shimpo, 29 November 2017. “‘Oku shiyo torikeshi mo’ Onaga shi, Henoko koji de uttae,” Tokyo shimbun, 1 December 2017. “Henoko suwarikomi 5000 nichi, shin kichi soshi e no danketsu kataku,” Ryukyu shimpo, 27 December 2017.

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perate. Oura Bay works appeared to be gathering momentum, seawall construction was proceeeding apace, Osprey ruled the skies of much of Okinawa, including the chain of “Osprey-pads” in the Yambaru forest, and fresh fronts in the state’s drive to divide and crush Okinawan resistance had opened at the ports of Oku (September), Nakagusuku and Motobu (both December). Even as the Okinawan protesters gathered to renew their resolve, riot police rudely dragged them away to clear the road to allow (just on that December day) 176 dump truck loads of materials into the construction site. Nothing, perhaps, so well illustrated the insanity of this high priority national project than the fact that, at that December 2017 rate of materials delivery, it would take just over 46 years to deliver the necessary 2.8 million tons of fill to the site, and only then could actual base construction commence.48 Of course the rate of delivery could be stepped up, even doubled or trebled, but only at even greater cost to the environment. Quite apart from the potentially devastating ecological consequences of introducing sand and soil from many parts of the country, in logistical terms this was the stuff of nightmare, threatening the living environment of countless thousands of people and likely to overwhelm the island’s port and road system. Japan bases a national policy and pledge to the US on the proposition that the Henoko project offered a realistic alternative for Futenma, but it made little sense. Furthermore, the project was plainly incompatible with the constitutional principle of regional self-government. Although the coastal area of Oura Bay was supposedly protected as “Rank 1” under prefectural Guidelines on the Conservation of the Natural Environment, the prefecture had no way even to enter and inspect, let alone to protect, its own seas and coast. In the climate of mounting unease, the Governor’s All Okinawa supporters made a new proposal: for a plebiscite to make clear the continuing opposition of the people to Henoko base construction.49 Any such step, however, implied that the prefectural will had somehow not been suffuciently expressed by the series of elections, including that of Onaga himself in 2015, in which rescission of the reclamation license had been the key issue. Even more critically, if such a a plebiscite were to be held on the same November 2018 day as the scheduled governa48

49

Figures courtesy of Makishi Yoshikazu and Doug Lummis, and assuming average truck load rate of about 80 per cent. “Shonin tekkai e no kankyo seibi,” Okinawa taimusu, 23 December 2017

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torial election, it would have the effect of postponing tekkai for almost a year, sufficient for the state to push works to, or beyond, the point of “no return.” Then came even more startling news. The Okinawa media on New Year’s Day 2018 reported that Governor Onaga was working on a proposal for an alternative to Henoko base construction. In the past Onaga had angrily rejected suggestions from the Abe government that Okinawa should think of alternatives if it wished to see an end to the Henoko project.50 Now, on a March visit to the US, he was reportedlly planning to submit to the Pentagon just such a proposal, to scrap Henoko construction but substitute strengthened military cooperation, easing the Okinawan burden by transferring the training of the 31st MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit) force to Sasebo in Nagasaki Prefecture, with the Japanese government providing high speed transport vessels beween Okinawa and Kyushu to facilitate the process. He was also planning to call for closer Japan SDF cooperation with the Marines in humanitarian and emergency relief operations, and – most improbable of all – to have Okinawa serve as a Marine Corps global command center.51 It was hard to imagine any such proposal being treated seriously in Washington, and inconceivable that Tokyo, having so often insisted that Henoko construction was the cornerstone of US-Japan security, could contemplate it for one moment. The serious consideration on the part of the prefectural government of such a bizarre plan may best be seen as a reflection of the confusion and desparation of the Okinawan resistance movement in the 21st year of the struggle against the militarization of Oura Bay.52 When US and Japanese government representatives meet on formal occasions, they tend to “celebrate” the “alliance” as a beacon of shared commitment to freedom, democracy, basic human rights, and the rule of law. Okinawans point out, however, that their experience is of being denied all of these. In the era of the Trump presidency, the pretence is even more absurd. For all Abe’s grandiloquent oratory before the United Nations or the US Congress about shared universal values and 50 51

52

See above, p. xxx. Kihara Satoru, “Onaga chiji no ‘Henoko daitaian’ teishi wa yonin dekinai,” Ari no hitokoto, 5 January 2018. (And Ryukyu Shimpo and Okinawa taimusu articles cited there). For trenchant discussion of these prefectural plans, Nakasone Isao, “‘Daitai-an’ teishi no shin-i wa nani ka,” Ryukyu shimpo, 10 January 2018.

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“proactive contribution to peace,” Okinawans experience his government as fundamentally opposed to them, to pacifism, and to the constitution. As of 2018, however, the All Okinawa movement faces its greatest challenge. For years, even for decades, Okinawans have not faltered, declaring on every conceivable occasion that they oppose the construction of any new base on their islands and insisting that existing bases be wound up and returned. National governments have never wavered in opposing this, none more determinedly so than that of Abe Shinzo. Treating Okinawan democratic sentiment as a barrier to be overcome, it not only refuses to listen but is ruthless in crushing the non-violent resistance (for which it seems to enjoy the support of a majority of mainland citizens). The All Okinawa movement has been the major avatar of majority Okinawan sentiment since 2013, especially since the election of Onaga Takeshi as Governor in December 2014, and the majority of Okinawans appear to have trusted Onaga to do as he constantly pledged: prevent the construction of any new base. His record, however, three years into his term as Governor, showed a pattern of successive procrastination, reluctance to endorse or associate with the mass protest movement, and reliance on judicial resolution even as the record shows that to be futile. Despite his pledge to prevent construction, he appeared to have no effective strategy. Consequently, the construction project on Oura Bay was advancing inexorably. The K9 seawall at Henoko, complete by November 2017, was ready to transport reclamation materials. Construction of two additional seawalls got underway in that same month. The prospect of reclamation and base construction looms now larger than ever. The state seems able to take with impunity whatever steps it deems necessary, while the people are more and more constrained. With the opening late in 2017 of new fronts, the ports of Oku, Nakagusuku and Motobu, and with the Schwab gate protest camp showing signs of division over tactics and strategy, the outlook was far from bright. On 4 February 2018, the stalwart of the anti-Henoko base movement, Nago City mayor Inamine Susumu, was defeated in his bid for a third term in office by the LDP-Komeito backed Toguchi Taketoyo. The reversal was a blow to the anti-base movement although the outcome was not quite the triumph for the Henoko base construction cause that the Abe governmen claimed. On the very eve of the poll, surveys showed Nago city people maintaining oposition at a level of

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63 per cent, with just 20 per cent in favour (figures scarcely changed since four years earlier when they were 64 and 19 per cent),53 and in exit polls on the actual day of the vote still over 60 per cent, including even one quarter of those who voted for the LDP-Komeito candidate Toguchi, declared themselves opposed to the Henoko project.54 Capitalizing on ambiguity, and following a plan attributed to Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide, Toguchi avoided any mention of the Henoko project during his campaign (refused to debate his opponent), and stressed only the economic benefits his close contacts with the national government would bring the city. The election outcome could thus be seen as the culmination of long sustained efforts by the Japanese state to “conquer” a hostile city that had in every conceivable in every conceivable forum said “No” to to the design to inflict a huge military installation on it. No national government had intervened so intensively to sway a local government election as did the Abe government for this election, dispatching top figures of government and ruling party to press the Toguchi cause and promising generous subsidies as reward for cooperation. The new mayor may enjoy state largesse for his promise to deliver the city, but the base agenda would still have to be carried forward against a resentful and alienated populace. TABLE: JAPAN VS OKINAWA, 1995–2018

53

54

4 September 1995

12-year old Okinawan girl raped by three US servicemen

April 1996

Return of Futenma marine base and half Northern Training Area (Yambaru forest) promised “in five to seven years”

December 1996

Futenma replacement to be on “east coast of Okinawa Island”

December 1997

Nago City plebiscite, majority reject base replacement plan, but mayor accepts and resigns

December 1999

City and Prefecture accept substitution project but subject to three conditions: joint civil-military, 25-year limit, and no adverse environmental impact

Yamashita Ryuichi et al., “Nago shimin, Henoko ‘hantai’ 63% seron chosa,” Asahi shimbun, 30 January 2018. “Nezuyoi shin kichi hantai,” Ryukyu shimpo, 5 February 2018.

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63 per cent, with just 20 per cent in favour (figures scarcely changed since four years earlier when they were 64 and 19 per cent),53 and in exit polls on the actual day of the vote still over 60 per cent, including even one quarter of those who voted for the LDP-Komeito candidate Toguchi, declared themselves opposed to the Henoko project.54 Capitalizing on ambiguity, and following a plan attributed to Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide, Toguchi avoided any mention of the Henoko project during his campaign (refused to debate his opponent), and stressed only the economic benefits his close contacts with the national government would bring the city. The election outcome could thus be seen as the culmination of long sustained efforts by the Japanese state to “conquer” a hostile city that had in every conceivable in every conceivable forum said “No” to to the design to inflict a huge military installation on it. No national government had intervened so intensively to sway a local government election as did the Abe government for this election, dispatching top figures of government and ruling party to press the Toguchi cause and promising generous subsidies as reward for cooperation. The new mayor may enjoy state largesse for his promise to deliver the city, but the base agenda would still have to be carried forward against a resentful and alienated populace. TABLE: JAPAN VS OKINAWA, 1995–2018

53

54

4 September 1995

12-year old Okinawan girl raped by three US servicemen

April 1996

Return of Futenma marine base and half Northern Training Area (Yambaru forest) promised “in five to seven years”

December 1996

Futenma replacement to be on “east coast of Okinawa Island”

December 1997

Nago City plebiscite, majority reject base replacement plan, but mayor accepts and resigns

December 1999

City and Prefecture accept substitution project but subject to three conditions: joint civil-military, 25-year limit, and no adverse environmental impact

Yamashita Ryuichi et al., “Nago shimin, Henoko ‘hantai’ 63% seron chosa,” Asahi shimbun, 30 January 2018. “Nezuyoi shin kichi hantai,” Ryukyu shimpo, 5 February 2018.

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December 1999

Obuchi government adopts Henoko construction projject, subject to conditions

August 2004

Marine helicopter crash on Okinawa International University

May 2006

Agreement on “Realignment of US Forces in Japan” (Beigun saihen)

30 August 2009

Election of Hatoyama as PM, promising Futenma substitution “at least outside Okinawa”

May 2010

Hatoyama reverses himself, agrees to Henoko project, and resigns

January 2013

Okinawan “Kempakusho” delegation to Tokyo

December 2013

Governor Nakaima issues license for reclamation of Oura Bay for FRF construction

10 December 2014

Onaga Takeshi replaces Nakaima as Governor of Okinawa.

16 July 2015

Okinawan “Third Party [Experts] Committee advises Oura Bay reclamation license issued December 2013 by (former) Governor Nakaima “flawed.”

13 October 2015

Governor Onaga cancels Oura Bay reclamation license.

27 October 2015

Government (MLITT Minister) “suspends” Onaga order.

2 November 2015

Okinawa prefecture complains to Disputes Council (Central and Local Government Disputes Management Council).

17 November 2015

National Government (Ishii, MLITT) launches malfeasance suit underAdministrative Appeals Act in Naha Court (Fukuoka High Court, Naha branch) against Okinawa seeking “proxy execution.”

24 December 2015

Disputes Council refuses to act on prefectural complaint.

25 December 2015

Prefecture launches suit in Naha court against government.

29 January 2016

Naha Court advises government and prefecture to settle.

4 March 2016

8BLBJ (out-of-court) Court Recommended Settlement. Works stop.

7 March 2016

State (MLITT) demands Onaga retract his cancelation order.

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14 March 2016

Onaga (Prefecture) refuses MLITT request (as an “illegal intervention by the state”).

April 2016

Rape/murder incident

17 June 2016

Disputes Council refuses to rule, urging “sincere discussions” to resolve “continuing undesirable” relations between state and prefecture.

22 July 2016

State launches new suit against prefecture in Naha Court

16 September 2016

Naha court verdict upholds state. Okinawa prefecture appeal to Supreme Court

13 December 2016

Marine Corps Osprey crashes off the coast from Nago City

20 December 2016

Supreme Court dismisses prefectural appeal

22 December 2016

Half (ca 4,000 hectares) of Marine Corps’ Northern Training area in Yambaru forest returned to Japan

26 December 2016

Governor Onaga cancels his October 2015 cancellation order

April 2017

Seawall construction works begin at Henoko

24 July 2017

Okinawa prefecture launches Naha court suit seeking stoppage of reclamation works because rock and coral crushing license issued by previous governor Nakaima has expired.

4 February 2018

Nago City mayoral election. LDP/Komeito-supported Toguchi Taketoyo defeats anti-base construction incumbent Inamine Susumu, 20,339 to 19,931.

13 February 2018

Naha District Court dismisses the prefectural suit against Oura Bay works

Chapter Five

Around the East [China] Sea ™

CHINA

Historians with an eye to the longue durée of the Asia-Pacific region ponder over what might succeed the three grand regional frames: the Pax Sinica Chinese tribute world of roughly 500 years to the late 19th century, the ill-fated Japanese project, Pax Nipponica, from roughly 1895 to 1945, and the ongoing Pax Americana from 1945 to today. This is not the place for an exhaustive discussion of China, but some brief reference is inescapable, especially as Japan comes to face the fact that the San Francisco containment policy it has held to with such fervor for so long has not “contained” China and no longer seems likely to. The post-war Japanese state was built on the assumption that the world would continue to spin on a US axis, as it had at the time of San Francisco (1951) when the US accounted for roughly half the world’s economic output and its military might was unquestioned. That preeminence underpinned the evolution of East Asia over the subsequent six decades, and it was common for the region’s growth and prosperity to be attributed to it. Gradually, however, as East Asia became the center of world economic dynamism, the institutional frame set at San Francisco came to be more-and-more at odds with the economic base. During its explosive growth years from early 1990s, China multiplied its per capita GDP many times. As a proportion of global GDP, it rose vertiginously, from 2 per cent in 1990 to approximately 17 per cent in 2016, towards a predicted 28 per cent in 2030 remaining on that figure in 2060, while Japan correspondingly declined, from 15 per cent in 1990 to below 10 per cent in 2008, around 4.3 per cent in 2015 and an expected 120

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3 per cent in 2060.1 It meant that the China whose economy was approximately half that of Japan in 1990 was four times greater in 2016 (in PPP or purchasing power parity terms).2 While China and India will both see “more than seven-fold increase of their income per capita over the same period,” the OECD and US shares of the world economy are likely to decline (from 65 to 42 per cent and from 23 to 16 per cent respectively). 3 Though excluded from the San Francisco Treaty, sixty-six years on China is the world’s largest economy and the principal economic partner of all parties to the treaty. Under the Trump presidency, as the economic underpinnings of US regional (and global) hegemony erode, the tone in which it asserts becomes increasingly shrill. Within the overall shift westwards (to East Asia) of global dynamism and power, it is the drastic shift underway in relative weight between Japan (major beneficiary of the San Francisco Treaty system) and China (excluded from it) that disturbs Japan, perhaps more even than its chronic problems of national debt, aging, shrinking population. Despite the fear that the Pax Americana is approaching exhaustion,4 21st century Japanese governments, never with greater determination than under Abe Shinzo, concentrate on trying to reinforce it. When the People’s Daily in 2013 denounced the San Francisco treaty as “illegal and invalid” it was no small matter.5 The nature of the Asia-Pacific future is nowhere more contested that across the Sea that is known in China and Korea as “East Sea” (Dong1

2

3

4

5

2015 IMF figures in “Economy Watch “GDP share of world total (PPP) Data for all counties, 2015.” http://www.economywatch.com/economic-statistics/economicindicators/GDP_Share_of_World_Total_PPP/; 1990 and 2030 figures from Mitsuru Obe, “Focus – Japan to refocus on US-led trade pact amid troubles with China,” 8BMM
4USFFU
+PVSOBM Online, and 2060 estimates from OECD Economic Policy Papers, “Looking to 2060: Long-term global growth prospects,” November 2012. http://www.oecd.org/eco/outlook/2060%20policy%20paper%20FINAL. pdf Terashima Jitsuro, “Noryoku no ressun, 157, “Uchimuku to ukeika no shinso kozo – 21 seiki Nhon de shinko shite iru mono,” Sekai, May 2015: pp. 202–205 at p. 204. 2016 data from World Bank, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP. MKTP.PP.CD/ The CIA (8PSME
'BDUCPPL
) confirms the 4:1 discrepancy. OECD, “Looking to 2060,” op. cit. India would grow from 7.0 to 18.2 per cent. (OECD, “Looking to 2060,” op. cit.) See John W. Dower and Gavan McCormack, Tenkanki no Nihon e – ‘Pakkusu Amerikana’ ka ‘Pakkusu Ajia’ ka, NHK shuppan shinsho, 2014. “China corrects Japan on treaty’s Diaoyu implications,” Peoples Daily, 31 May 2013. http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90883/8265411.html/

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hae) and in Japan and Russia as “Sea of Japan” (Nihonkai or Yaponskaye More). China, Russia, North and South Korea, and Japan all front this sea, which seems destined through the 21st century to become a kind of world center, following the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and Pacific in the 16th to 20th. The name for the sea is contested, but in what follows I will use “East Sea,” not only because of its being the equivalent of the Chinese and Korean term but because it lacks the possessive association of “Japan Sea” and is therefore more appropriate to the kind of multilateral community that is surely the desirable future for the region. The accomplishment of such an “East Sea Community” will depend on the attainment of peace and stability in the sea’s environs and between states which front it, which in turn depends on rapprochement between Japan and China, China and Taiwan, Japan and Russia, by North and South Korea with each other and with surrounding states and between them and the United States. The prospect of this happening is not bright, not least because Japan clings to its position as “client state,” resting its security on subordination to the US, embrace of US nuclear weapons and military confrontation with China, and tending “to view the world solely through the filter of the United States.”6 The “normalization” of the Korean peninsula can only happen when the Japanese colonial record is resolved and the war that began there almost seventy years ago ended. Each time negotiations towards “normalizing” the peninsula break down or North Korea conducts a missile or nuclear test, tension levels rise. That in turn helps justify the US military base presence in South Korea and Japan, which in turn intimidates North Korea and drives it further to seek security in missile and nuclear programs. Thus far at least the North Korean “deterrent” has worked to deter its enemies from frontal assault, but it (and its missile program) have also destabilized the region. Having achieved its current hegemony through war, the US keeps open the possibility of war as necessary instrument to maintain or recover it, becoming in the process probably the mightiest military power in history. As of 2016, its $611 billion annual military expenditure (4.6 per cent of its GDP) accounted for about 36 per cent of the $1.6 trillion dollars spent on arms around the world,7 exceeding 6

7

Terashima Jitsuro, “Miete kita shin gaiko dokutorin,” Sekai, June 2002, pp. 147– 156, at p. 156. “China’s Military Rise – The Dragon’s new teeth,” The Economist, 7 April 2012.

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the sums spent by the next seven countries put together, surpassing China ($215 billion, or 2 per cent of GDP) by almost three times and Russia ($69 billion or 5 per cent of GDP) by almost 10 times.8 That already prodigious military might is bound to be even further built up under President Trump. The US has about 800 military bases around the globe and ten, soon to be eleven, aircraft carriers, each hosting 55 fighter planes,9 and its already overwhelming strength is complemented by that of its allies, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. Its forces are fighting in at least seven countries10 and it intervenes, assassinates or (at least till very recently) tortures with impunity around the world. US defense planners insist they are responding to a Chinese (or Russian or North Korean) threat. China, they say, has drawn First and Second Island Defense Lines, and is concentrating on developing the capacity in the event of hostilities to deny hostile access within the seas bound by the first line, drawn from the Korean peninsula through Jeju island, the Okinawan islands, Taiwan, and the Philippines (the Yellow and East, Seas), China’s “near seas,” while building also significant capacity within the seas bounded by the second line, through Ogasawara, the Marianas, Palau to Indonesia, and eventually (by 2050 or thereabouts) extending naval operational capacity to the “far seas;” i.e. becoming by then a global power, something like the US.11 It is true that China has greatly increased its military spending – by six times over the past 13 years12 – but that rate of increase has not kept pace with its rate of GDP growth.13 It has built up significant submarine and missile capacity, but has no military bases outside its own territory and just one second-hand, refur8

9

10 11

12

13

SIPRI, “World Military Expenditure” 2016, https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/ files/Trends-world-military-expenditure-2016.pdf/ Taoka Shunji, “Chugoku kubo no samui ‘sento noryoku,” Shukan kinyobi, 27 January 2017, p. 30. Counting Afganistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya. Anton Lee Woshik ll, “An Anti-Access Approximation: The PLA’s active strategic counterattacks on exterior lines,” China Security, Issue 19, March 2012, http://www.chinasecurity.us/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4 87&Itemid=8 Demetri Sevastopulo, “US plans to boost Pacific naval forces,” Financial Times, 2 June 2012. Defense spending in 2006–2016 grew by 3.2 times but GDP by 3.7 times. (Taoka Shunji, “Chugoku kyoiron no kyo to jitsu,” Shukan kinyobi, 22 July 2016, pp. 38–39.)

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bished (originally Ukrainian) aircraft carrier (carrying 20 fighters). The cross-Pacific military imbalance is plain and the only seriously contrested territory between the two super-powers is the uninhabited cluster of tiny islands known in China as Diaoyu and in Japan as Senkaku (on which see below). To counter such “threat,” the Unted States from ca. 2010 has developed concepts that it refers to as “Air-Sea Battle” and “Pacific Tilt,” part of its design to maintain its hegemony across air, land, sea, space, and cyber space, while shifting its military and strategic focus from the Middle East and Africa to East Asia, concentrating 60 per cent of its navy – six aircraft carriers plus a majority of cruisers, destroyers, littoral combat ships and submarines – in the Pacific, i.e. primarily with China in its sights.14 China has yet to contemplate placing any battleships (or its aircraft carrier) offshore from California. The Chinese desire for “normalcy” as a global power, able to project its naval weight and to protect its maritime interests in the same way other powers take for granted, is seriously disadvantaged by lack of any undisputed access to the Pacific Ocean. From its perspective, the gateways to the Pacific lie in the north through the Soya Strait between Sakhalin and Hokkaido and the Tsugaru Strait between Hokkaido and Honshu, and in the south through the Osumi Strait between Kagoshima and Tanegashima or the Miyako Strait between Okinawa (main) Island and Miyako Island. Further south lies the Bashi Channel between Taiwan and the Philippines. Japan resents the Chinese Navy’s passage through such passages, notably the Osumi and Miyako Straits, but from the Chinese viewpoint, the long chain of Japanese controlled islands looks like nothing so much as a maritime great wall, and the moves to militarize sectors of it till now neglected (especially between Okinawa Island and Taiwan) stir its concern. As the Chinese Navy begins tentatively to move beyond the constraints of coastal defense within the East China Sea (the First Defense line) towards the Second, (the Pacific) and ultimately global waters, Japan, guided by its San Francisco Treaty-rooted strategic compass, inclines to resist. It clings to the same kind of role it served during the Cold War when it concentrated on trying to contain 14

Leon Panetta, Secretary of Defense, United States, “The US Rebalance Towards the Asia-Pacific,” Keynote presentation, The 11th IISS Asian Security Summit The Shangri-La Dialogue, Singapore, 2 June 2012. http://www.iiss.org/conferences/ the-shangri-la-dialogue/shangri-la-dialogue-2012/speeches/first-plenary-session/ leon-panetta/.

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the Soviet Navy. Over and under the Sea around which peace must be established, battle ships and aircraft carriers, fighter planes, submarines, missile and counter-missile systems proliferate. To go with the security system directed at containing China, the US moves to construct an economic sphere that excludes it. While neo-liberal, Asian free trade proponents call for removal of barriers to the free flow of capital and goods under US/Western aegis on the one hand, on the other, proponents of Asian “community,” seek to revisit and revise the San Francisco Treaty formula and construct in its stead a post-Cold War East Asian political and moral order. The former has given shape to various Free Trade agreements while the latter has from time to time inspired politicians and intellectuals to think in terms of overcoming the legacies of almost 200 years of war and confrontation through construction of a community along something like European lines. Proposals in the former vein for a reformulated Asian (or Asia-Pacific) zone began to take shape, oriented towards tariff reduction, economic integration and ultimately a single market, from ASEAN (Association of Souheast Asian Nations), founded in Bangkok in 1967 and consolidating by 1999 into the 10-state Southeast Asian Community of today, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) organization, formed at the initiative of then Australian Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, in 1989 and becoming inclusive of 21 Pacific Rim economies,15 the “ASEAN+3” (China, Japan, South Korea) of 1999, the East Asia Study Group of 2001 and East Asia Summit of 2005, the ASEAN + 6 (adding Australia, New Zealand, and India, and then ASEAN + 8, joined from 2011 by Russia and the United States. Currently these groupings strive towards an even more comprehensive RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) or FTAAP (Free Trade Area of Asia and the Pacific).16 The last of these, launched in Beijing in 2013, has been described by APEC’s Executive Director as the “big goal out there in the future.”17 15

16

17

Kiyoshi Kojima, +BQBO
BOE
B
/FX
8PSME
&DPOPNJD
0SEFS, London, Croom Helm, 1977. RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership), founded at ASEAN Summit in 2012, comprising 10 ASEAN nations plus India, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand; and FTAAP (Free Trade Area of Asia and the Pacific), founded in 2013 in Beijing. “Elite Talk: A talk with APEC Chief Alan Bollard on China, FTAAP, New Silk Road,” People’s Daily Online, 10 November 2014. http://en.people.cn/102775/310666/ index.html/

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From time to time, visionary elements appeared within or unerpinning this GDP and market-expanding formula. From around 1990, as the Cold War was collapsing, various formulations for a possible future appeared. London-based economist Morishima Morito enisaged a Community that would include Japan and China, South and North Korea, and Taiwan, with Ryukyu/Okinawa as its capital, thus solving at a stroke the divisions of China, Korea, and Japan rooted in the San Francisco settlement. Tokyo intellectuals Wada Haruki and Kang Sang-jung projected an East Asian Community that would be multicultural, multiethnic, multilingual, with identity defined by civic categories of “public” (kokyosei) rather than by race or nation.18 Where Morishima had conceived of centrality for Okinawa, Kang would deal with the vexing problem of Korean division by assigning Korea the role of neutral host for some key institutions, somewhat like Luxemburg in Europe. All three sought to apply European developments to Asia, and all saw such a Community – a “Common House” as Wada Haruki put it (borrowing from Mikhail Gorbachev’s 1989 term, the “Common European House”) – as offering a way to resolve chronic territorial problems bequeathed from San Francisco. Beyond common market, the East Sea states would evolve into a “community” of shared civic, democratic, and multicultural values. War would become unimaginable. A utopian “community” orientation fed into the East Asian Economic Group (EAEG) idea proposed by Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohammad in 1990, and later into the “East Asian Vision Group” proposal at the Kuala Lumpur meeting of ASEAN+3 in 2001. The Vision group began with the following words: “We, the people of East Asia, aspire to create an East Asian community of peace, prosperity, and progress based on the full development of all peoples in the region. Concurrent with this vision is the goal that, in the future, East Asian community will make a positive contribution to the rest of the world.”19 18

19

Morishima Morito, Collaborative Development in Northeast Asia, Houndmills, 2000, pp. 134–135 [Japanese translation as Nihon ni dekiru koto wa nani ka, Tokyo, Iwanami, 2001]; Wada Haruki, Tohoku Ajia kyodo no ie, Tokyo, Heibonsha, 2001; Kang Sang-Jung, Tohoku Ajia kyodo no ie o mezashite, Tokyo, Heibonsha, 2001. East Asian Vision Group, “Towards an East Asian Community: Region of Peace, Prosperity, and Progress,” http://www.wofa.co.jp/region/asia-paci/report2001. pdf/

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Prime Minister Koizumi (2001–2006) unexpectedly embraced similar sentiment in the “Pyongyang Declaration” he signed in October 2002 with North Korea’s Kim Jong Il. It was the first time since 1945 for the term “Northeast Asia” to appear in a Japanese diplomatic document. South Korea’s Roh Moo Hyun (President, 2003–2008) too, in several key speeches including his inaugural address, referred to a similar ideal. In 2007 leaders of South and North Korea agreed to turn the fiercely contested West Sea into a zone of peace and cooperation.20 At their summit meeting in February 2008, then Japanese Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo agreed with China’s president Hu Jintao that the East Sea should be made a “Sea of Peace, Cooperation and Friendship.”21 A year and a half later, in New York in September, 2009, newly elected Democratic Party Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio proposed that it be transformed into a “Sea of Fraternity” (Yuai no umi),22 to which Hu is said to have responded positively. Three months later, in the hey-day of the Hatoyama government, Ozawa Ichiro led a 600-strong, semi-official friendship mission to Beijing. While utopian community-building remanied a sub-current of the trade and economic cooperation agendas, governments came and went, and policies shifted, notably following changes of government in South Korea in 2008, the United States in 2009, and Japan in 2010. On the eve of her election as South Korean president late in 2012, Park Keunhee proposed a “Northeast Asian Peace and Cooperation Initiative” for a grand reconciliation between Korea, China and Japan,23 but her term of office ended in disgrace with corruption charges and impeachment. Her successor in 2017, Moon Jae-in, took office pledging to resume the cause of regional peace and reconciliation, and formulated a regional “Northeast Asia-plus Responsible Community” agenda.24 20

21

22

23

24

Gavan McCormack, “Contested Waters - Contested Texts: Storm over Korea’s West Sea,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, 21 February 2011, http://japanfocus.org/-GavanMcCormack/3492 “China, Japan sign joint statement on promoting strategic, mutually beneficial ties,” China View, 8 May 2008. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-05/08/ content_8124331.htm/ Sachiko Sakamaki, “China’s Hu, Japan’s Hatoyama agree to extend thaw in relations,” Bloomberg, 22 September 2009, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/ news?pid=newsarchive&sid=amN_cwK8u4NU/ Park Keun-hee, “A plan for peace in North Asia,” DzF
8BMM
4USFFU
+PVSOBM, 12 November 2012. “Moon daitoryo, 8 gatsu 15 nichi ‘Hokuto Ajia koso’ happyo e,” Yonhap, 15 July 2017.

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With the advent of the Moon regime, peninsular confrontation gave way with remarkable suddenness to multi-sided negotiation. NORTH KOREA Rogue Regime

On and around the Korean peninsula a century’s unresolved legacies, from the Japanese imperialism and colonialism of the early 20th century, national division, the Korean War and the Cold War, fester unhealed. North Korea’s nuclear weapon tests – in 2006, 2009, 2013, 2016 (twice) and 2017 – and its missile tests, culminating in several of apparently intercontinental range (ICBM) in July, August, and November 2017, defy UN sanctions and draw condemnation on all sides. A relatively small (population: 25 million), industrialized but impoverished and heavily sanctioned country (its GDP just one-fortyeighth the size of its southern, US-allied neighbor)25 is the point on the planet that poses greatest risk of regional and global (even nuclear) conflict. For many reasons, Japan is deeply involved. In 2013–14, the United Nations commissioned the Australian jurist, Michael Kirby, to survey and report on the state of human rights in the country. The ensuing report declared that: “Systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations have been and are being committed by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, its institutions and officials. In many instances, the violations … constitute crimes against humanity … The gravity, scale, and nature of those violations reveal a state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world.” 26

North Korea’s goose-stepping soldiers, mass games, strident TV presenters, missile launches and nuclear explosions feed into the image that Kirby painted of North Korea as a uniquely distorted, “evil,” regime, and that assessment is used to justify sanctions that punish its people. No country in modern history has been so friendless, loathed and condemned. Revulsion and fear help justify revamped regional alliances and stepped-up militarization, new weapons and missile “defense” systems, 25 26

CIA, 8PSME
'BDUPPPL, Online, 2017. For my discussion of the Kirby report, “Human rights and humanitarian intervention: the North Korea case,” Seoul, Journal of Political Criticism, vol. 16, No 5, 2015, pp. 151–171.

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war “games” that rehearse resumption of the Korean War (1950–1953) and threat, even genocidal threat, to the people of North Korea. The principle attributed in 2003 to then US Vice-president Dick Cheney that, “We don’t negotiate with evil, we defeat it” is used to justify abandonment of diplomacy and North Korea comes to be seen as a “rogue regime” irresponsibly pursuing a nuclear and missile path in defiance of the “international community.” As already noted, however, President Trump’s agreement to meet the North Korean leader for talks signalled a possible radical shift. This is not to say that the concerns over human rights (to which Kirby and others draw attention) are not serious – they obviously are27 – but to recognize that the conditions under which the state exists – of unresolved war, sanctions, isolation – are such that it has never known normalcy. Only in the context of a major multilateral diplomatic effort to bring it in from the cold of more than 100 years as colony, divided state, and global outsider, is it likely that its political practice might move or begin to move from dictatorship to democracy, and only then is it likely that Japan and the surrounding East Asian region can enjoy real peace and security. But where Kirby projects a North Korea that is inexplicably dark and even evil, specialists tend to contextualize it as a “guerrilla state” or “partisan state” (Japanese historian Wada Haruki’s term),28 in reference to the siege mentality cultivated over many decades confronting powerful enemies intent on crushing it, or as a “porcupine” (prickly, obsessively defensive) state. Its truly remarkable feature may be that it exists at all, rooted in almost one hundred years of national resistance to Japanese imperialism, the trauma of imposed national division followed by war against the United Nations (led by the United States) that devastated the country and left millions dead, and confrontation ever since then with explicit US nuclear intimidation. The quality implied by designations such as “partisan state” or “porcupine state” is that of being non-aggressive and non-expansionist, but strongly, even obsessively, defensive. Although North Korea presents its message to the world in shrill terms, its core is the essentially reasonable demand for a peace treaty to end the Korean War, the “normalization” of relations with Japan and the United States, and a lifting of the multiple punitive sanctions under which it labors (including but not confined to those ordered by the UN since 27

28

See Gavan McCormack, Target North Korea: Pushing North Korea to the Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe, New York, Nation Books, 2004, especially chapters 3 and 4. Wada Haruki, Kin Nissei to Manshu konichi senso, Tokyo, Heibonsha, 1992.

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2006). Yet the major world powers today, Japan prominent among them, have no ears to listen to any such message. They represent it as crazed and threatening and refuse to talk to it other than to demand its submission. The “North Korean problem” is commonly understood in its most concentrated form in the relationship with the US, but the Japan relationship, stretching back to the Japanese colonial hold over the Korean peninsula for four decades to 1945, and to the anti-Japanese guerrilla struggle led by the founder of the North Korean state, Kim Il Sung, is of profound importance. More than seven decades after liquidation of the Japanese empire, Japan and North Korea are yet to establish inter-state relations. Japan plays a key role on the international stage in demanding harsh and uncompromising measures and insisting that North Korea must submit unconditionally. North Korea, for its part, cultivates foundation myths and hero stories rooted in the anti-Japanese partisan struggle of almost a century ago. There have been several moments when normalizaton came close. In September 1990, Japan sent a mission to express regret over colonial rule, the desire to compensate for the misery and misfortune it caused, and the wish to normalize relations.29 Negotiations to that effect were opened but were overtaken by mutual hostility, the first nuclear crisis of 1993–1994, and the US determination not to allow Japan to take any independent action towards normalization for fear of destabilizing US regional hegemony. Again in 2002, however, Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro took a bold initiative in undertaking a visit to Pyongyang and the declaration by the Japanese and North Korean leaders of the “Pyongyang Declaration.” Japan apologized in a spirit of “humility,” expressing “deep remorse and heartfelt apology” for the “tremendous damage and suffering to the people of Korea through its colonial rule in the past,” and North Korea’s Kim Jong-il apologized for the abduction of a dozen or so Japanese citizens [in 1977–1983] and promised “appropriate measures to ensure that such regrettable incidents, that took place under the abnormal bilateral relationship, would never happen in the future.”30 The two countries came close to settlement.31 29 30

31

Wada Haruki, Chosen gendaishi, Tokyo, Iwanami, 2012, pp. 162ff. Wada Haruki and Gavan McCormack, “The Strange Record of 15 Years of JapanNorth Korea Negotiations,” Japan Focus, 28 September 2005. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Japan-DPRK Pyongyang Declaration,” Pyongyang, 17 September 2002. http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/n_korea/pmv0209/ pyongyang.html

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Since then, however, the question of those abductions has defied resolution and preoccupied Japanese attention. Abe Shinzo, who accompanied Prime Minister Koizumi to Pyongyang as Chief Cabinet Secretary in 2002, has persisted in rejecting North Korea’s apologies and explanations of the abductions and as Prime Minister in 2006– 2007 and again from 2012 has attached an even higher priority to abduction matters than to missiles or nuclear weapons. His government (from 2006) insists that at least some of those North Korea claims to have died are still alive and being held involuntarily. The most important case is that of Yokota Megumi, abducted as a thirteen-year old schoolgirl in 1977. After marrying and giving birth to a daughter she is said by North Korea to have died at her own hand around 1993. The absence of DNA remains did not, of course, mean she was still alive, but when her DNA could not be detected in remains that North Korea sent to Japan in 2004 purporting to be hers, the government of Japan concluded that she must still be alive and demanded her return. The international scientific journal, Nature, took the unusual step of reprimanding Japan for manipulation of the record crossing “the boundary of science’s freedom of political interference.”32 So long as Japan insists that North Korea return to it abductees that North Korea says are no longer alive there can be no resolution. Japanese diplomacy makes considerable efforts to internationalize its stance and it was a kind of Japanese diplomatic triumph when President Trump included reference to the Megumi abduction in his UN speech in September 2017 and when, two months later, he met with representatives of the abducted families association in Tokyo (including Megumi’s parents). All talks with North Korea were thus frozen and the abduction problem deadlocked, but Abe could continue to reap political benefit from his resolutely anti-North Korea stance. Despite the Japanese focus on the abduction issue, North Korea’s nuclear and missile program were obviously the major concerns elsewhere. Only after sweating through decade after decade under the threat of US nuclear weapons deployed (between 1958 and 1991) just across the border in South Korea, did North Korea turn seriously to the quest for its own deterrent. Noting the fate of states such as Iraq and Libya that confronted the global superpower but lacked any nuclear 32

“Poliitcs versus reality,” editorial, Nature, vol. 434, 17 arch 2005, p. 257. For discussion, Gavan McCormack, “Disputed bones: Japan, North Korea and the ‘Nature’ controversy,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 27 April 2005

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deterrent, North Korea came to see its very survival as associated with possession of nuclear weapons. It had, in other words, the temerity to adopt “great power” thinking for itself. A crisis in 1993–1994 (the first “North Korean nuclear crisis”) was resolved by a visit to Pyongyang by Jimmy Carter, ex-president and presidential envoy. Carter later noted that what North Korea wanted was a peace treaty with the United States and an end to economic sanctions.33 William Perry, Secretary of Defense from 1994 to 1997, brought the two countries close to a negotiated settlement and in 2000 Bill Clinton went to the brink of normalization, exchanging high level visits with Pyongyang only to have time run out before he could take the next step and actually visit Pyongyang. But once the Bush administration proclaimed North Korea beyond the pale as part of the “axis of evil,” the “evil” label stuck and military build-up and mass war games replaced negotiations. Under Trump from 2017 the state that had been for almost the entirety of its existence subject to nuclear intimidation,34 having attracted no sympathy and little understanding, came to be seen universally as the major threat to world peace. It is designated rogue regime, and ultimate “other.” North Korea “as it is”

In 2016, William Perry looked back on almost two decades of failed US policy (since his own time as Secretary of Defense) and urged the US to deal with “North Korea as it is, not as we wish it to be,” in other words to give up for the time being the hope of dismantling its nuclear program (recognizing that it is simply too late) and to concentrate on what he called the three No’s: no new weapons, no better weapons, no transfer of nuclear weapons or technology.35 North Korea took note of this widely publicized “Perry process” formula and its staterun media declared a readiness to suspend all further testing if the US would turn to winding up the Korean War (with a peace treaty and 33

34

35

“Statement from former US President Jimmy Carter on current US-North Korea relations,” 10 August 2017. (https://www.cartercenter.org/news/pr/northkorea-081017.html/) For declassified materials documenting this, Associated Press, “US repeatedly threatened to use nukes on N. Korea: declassified documents,” 9 October 2010. http://www.rawstory.com/2010/10/repeatedly-threatened-nukes/ William J. Perry, “How to contain North Korea,” Politico, 10 January 2016.

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“normalization”).36 By this time, however, the prevailing mood, fed by the Kirby Report (and global media that matched it in tone) was one of absolutist denunciation. Furthermore, responsibility for the breakdown of past, negotiated agreements, contrary to popular understanding, has been far from onesided.37 The introduction of nuclear weapons to the peninsula in the first place, the US refusal to take seriously its own obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 to “negotiate in good faith to achieve a precise result – nuclear disarmament in all its aspects” – and the inclusion of North Korea on the nuclear target list, were all breaches of the Treaty. In fact all the “great power” permanent members of the UN Security Council are in breach by reason of the fact that they ignore their obligation under Article 6 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty to set about denuclearizing.38 North Korea, by contrast, is not bound by the Non-Proliferation Treaty (having withdrawn in 2003) and is in the unique position of a state that has been subject for 67 years to the threat of nuclear extermination. It is the one country in today’s world that might have claim to justification for the “threat or use of nuclear weapons” under the World Court’s 1996 “Advisory Opinion,” on grounds of an “extreme circumstance of self-defense, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake.”39 In other words, while the unlawfulness of all the other nuclear weapon countries, is plain, North Korea, uniquely, might have a case. In the Agreed Framework of 1994, and under the Beijing Six-Party Talks formula of the decade from 2003 (especially in the agreements of 2005 and 2006), North Korea periodically suspended and promised to negotiate away its nuclear weapons and programs, but was rebuffed by the US, Japan, South Korea, or all in concert.40 Jack Pritchard, a State 36

37

38

39

40

Wada Haruki, “Kita chosen kiki to heiwa kokka Nihon no heiwa gaiko,” Sekai, July 2017, pp. 96–104, at p. 99. Tim Shorrock, “Diplomacy with North Korea has worked, and can work again,” The Nation, 5 September 2017. The International Court of Justice unanimously interpreted Article VI of the NonProliferation Treaty as implying an obligation on the part of nuclear weapon states to “pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.” International Court of Justice, “Advisory opinion on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons,” 6 July 1996, http://www.icj-cij.org/en/case/95/ See my Target North Korea: Pushing North Korea to the Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe, New York, Nation Books, 2004; also “Difficult Neighbors – Japan and North Korea,” in Gi-Wook Shin, Soon-won Park, and Daqing Yang, eds, Rethinking

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Department’s North Korea expert, referred to the US in the Beijing “Six Party Talks” that got underway from 2003 as “a minority of one … isolated from the mainstream of its four allies and friends.”41 Strongly backed, or urged on, by Japan, the US was able to sink the agreements hammered out around the various tables and ensure that nothing short of surrender and submission on North Korea’s part would suffice.42 C. Kenneth Quinones, another State Department official with experience of negotiations, referred to North Korea as being “very precise and consistent in their positions” while by contrast the track record of the then Bush administration was “not one of diplomacy but rather one of vacillation, inconsistency and, ultimately, undercutting the position and the efforts of its own diplomats.”43 South Korea’s chief negotiator at the Six Party talks in 2006 and 2007, Chun Young-woo, spoke of his sense that the North Korean participants at the talks felt “besieged, squeezed, strangled, and cornered by hostile powers” and noted the tone of “visceral aversion” or “condescension, self-righteousness or a vindictive approach” on the part of the major parties (by which he plainly meant the United States and Japan).44 When North Korea in January 2015 called on the US to suspend its planned war games in return for which it would abstain at least provisionally from nuclear testing, Washington gave no response.45 Ruling out negotiations, it set about rehearsing “special operations” designed to “decapitate” the North Korean regime (i.e. to capture and/or assassinate its leader, Kim Jong-un).46 Thus was the scene set for the crisis of 2017.

41

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Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in Northeast Asia, London and New York, Routledge, 2007, pp. 154–172. Charles L. (Jack) Pritchard, “Six Party Talks Update: False Start or a Case for Optimism,” Conference on “The Changing Korean Peninsula and the Future of East Asia,” sponsored by the Brookings Institution and Joongang Ilbo, 1 December 2005. See my Target North Korea: Pushing North Korea to the Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe; also “Difficult Neighbors – Japan and North Korea,” in Shinetal, eds, Rethinking Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in Northeast Asia, pp. 154–172. C. Kenneth Quinones, “The United States and North Korea: Observations of an Intermediary,” lecture to US-Korea Institute at SAIS, Johns Hopkins University, 2 November 2006, audio link at: http://www.uskoreainstitute.org/events/index.htm/ Chun Young-woo, “The North Korean nuclear issue,” speech to Hankyoreh Foundation conference, Busan, 25 November 2006 (quoted in McCormack, “Human rights and humanitarian intervention,” p. 166.) Wada Haruki, “Kita chosen kiki,” op. cit, p. 99. On Oplan 5015, the “decapitation strike,” see Choe Sang-hun,“North Korean hackers stole US - South Korean military plans, lawmaker says,” New York Times, 10 October 2017.

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On Global Tables

To the end of 2017, two main sets of proposals now rest on global tables. The US and its allies, notably Japan but with Australia also in a prominent position, demand North Korean submission, backing that demand by explicit nuclear threat. They show no apparent vision for the region other than to shore up US hegemony. China and Russia, supported by other states such as Germany and France and by prominent US figures such as William Perry, condemn the North Korean missile and nuclear tests but urge the “three No’s”, already mentioned, to freeze the existing status quo, taking steps to defuse tensions, respecting the DPRK’s “justified concerns” and creating a peninsular “peace and security mechanism.”47 There were some surprisingly bold and ambitious dimensions to their design. China’s Foreign Minister in May 2017 proposed that: “As a first step, the DPRK suspend its missile and nuclear activities in exchange for a halting of large-scale US-ROK military exercises. This ‘double suspension’ approach can help us break out of the security dilemma and bring the parties back to the table.”48

Three months later, the Russian and Chinese governments together issued a joint statement condemning the North Korean missile tests but proposing measures aimed at defusing tensions, respecting the DPRK’s “justified concerns” and creating a peninsular “peace and security mechanism.”49 Germany’s Angela Merkel, France’s Emmanuel Macron, and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres shared this basic approach and opposed the hard-line US-Japan coercion formula.50 Guterres warns that “fiery talk can lead to fatal misunderstandings … the solution must be political – this is a time for statesmanship – we must not sleepwalk our way into war.”51 47

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Joint Statement by the Russian and Chinese Foreign Ministries on the Korean peninsula’s problems,” Moscow, 4 July 2017. http://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_ policy/news/-/asset_publisher/ Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Quoted in Fu Ying, “The Korean nuclear issue: past, present, and future – A Chinese perspective,” John L. Thornton China Center at Brookings, Strategy Paper 3, May 2017, pp. 1–24, at p. 23. Joint Statement by the Russian and Chinese Foreign Ministries,” Moscow, 4 July 2017. Op. cit. “Kita Chosen – atsuryoku ippendo wa Nichibei dake,” Tokyo shimbun, 12 October 2017. “UN Chief: Millions live under shadow of DPRK nuclear threat,” Voice of America, 19 September 2017, https://www.voanews.com/a/unga-guterres-northkorea-/4035063.html/

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It is a measure of how the world has changed that it should have been left to the Russian and Chinese presidents and Foreign Ministers to articulate this “statesmanship,” insisting on reason and law, seeking negotiation without pre-conditions, recognizing North Korea’s right to survive, and calling for a comprehensive agenda to integrate it into a community with its neighbors. Russia’s Putin pointed to the futility of “winding up military hysteria” as a course likely to lead only to “a global catastrophe on the planet and huge numbers of human casualties.” “There is no other way,” he said, “apart from a peaceful and a diplomatic one to resolve the North Korea nuclear problem.”52

Abe, by contrast, was adamant that there could be no such negotiations. Provided a sufficiently overwhelming force could be mobilized against it, he appeared to believe North Korea would crumble and submit. Tension and hostility ratcheted up steadily through 2017. In March the Trump administration declared that it had exhausted its “strategic patience,” its “sword stands ready” and “all options are on the table” and there was no room for negotiation.53 In August the “Two plus Two” Foreign and Defense Ministers of the US and Japan formally agreed that they would continue: “To pressure North Korea … to compel [sic.] it to take concrete actions to end its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and to achieve the complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.”54

This CVID formula, constituting the pre-condition for negotiation, is tantamount to stating that the US and Japan would only meet North 52

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Vladimir Putin, Press Conference, 5 September 2017, quoted in “Former nuclear inspector: calling North Korea ‘nuclear capable’ is a ‘gross exaggeration’,” The Real News, 5 September 2017. http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_cont ent&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=19925/ On the mixed Washington signals of the early months of 2017, see Lee Jin-man, “The Many North Korea Policies of the Trump Administration,” Atlantic Monthly, April 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/04/themany-north-korea-policies-of-rex-w-tillerson/524736/ US Department of State, Joint Statement of the Security Consultative Committee, Washington, 17 August 2017. https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2017/08/273504. htm/

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Korea once it surrenders. As the US-Japan relationship flourished under Trump and Abe, the CVID demand was linked to what might be called a RAAA (Return All Abductees Alive) position dictated by Abe.55 Prime Minister Abe’s “oped” contribution to the New York Times in September 2017 made his uncompromising position clear;56 North Korea had to be compelled, not persuaded. Likewise on the occasion of the summit with President Trump in Tokyo in November 2017, he declared that: “There is no point in the dialogue for the sake of dialogue with North Korea. Now is the time not for dialogue but for applying maximum level of pressure on North Korea.”57

That position was almost certainly in breach of the organization’s Charter, Article 2 (3) and (4) of whch require disputes to be settled by “peaceful means” and forbid “the threat or use of force.” Article 33 further specifies the obligation of parties to any dispute likely to endanger international peace and security to “first of all, seek a solution by negotiation inquiry, mediation, conciliation … or other peaceful means of their own choice.” The act of threatening, denouncing, and refusing to negotiate is patently illegal and criminal. To the extent that they rule out negotiations with North Korea and insist only on submission, the US and Japan both breached this clear rule. Furthermore, the legality of a threat stands or falls on the same legal grounds as if the threat were carried out.”58 As Japan embraced the CVID position, and as Japanese SDF vessels and planes participated in war rehearsal exercises, the government of Japan was in breach both of the UN Charter and of the proscription on the “threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes” in its own constitution. Furthermore, although the US and Japanese position (as denoted by the CVID formula) was that they would only meet North Korea provided it first surrendered, nobody who has ever stud55

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Nobody knows exactly how many surviving abductees there might be, or indeed if there are any at all. Estimates range from around 10 to 100. (Hasuike Toru, “Chosen hanto kiki to rachi higaisha,” Sekai, December 2017, pp. 153–160.) “Shinzo Abe: Solidarity against the North Korean threat,” New York Times, 17 September 2017. “Remarks by President Trump and Prime Minister Abe of Japan in Joint Press Conference | Tokyo, Japan,” The White House, 6 November 2017. https://www. whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/11/06/remarks-president-trump-andprime-minister-abe-japan-joint-press International Court of Justice, op. cit.

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ied North Korea or its history believes that it will submit to pressure or intimidation, or abandon its nuclear and missile programs short of a comprehensive settlement of its security concerns. So the US and Japan demanded the impossible, mobilizing massive forces just offshore to back up their demands. It looked much like a design to provoke North Korea to take some action that would justify mass “retaliation.” Abe became in effect Trump’s closest friend and ally. While the rest of the world recoiled in horror as the spiral of abuse and intimidation gathered momentum and seemed headed towards frontal conflict, the Abe government associated itself ever more closely with Trump, encouraging his obduracy and endorsing his bellicosity, while delighting in rounds of golf together Japan and Australia stood out as countries that explicitly approved the American threat to North Korea that “all options” (i.e. including war) were on the table.59 Both were left reeling by the sudden switch in Trumpian diplomacy from confrontation and abuse to negotiation and talks. Rehearsing Invasion

The exercises conducted by the US and its allies, designed to intimidate, include rehearsals of invasion and “decapitation” of North Korea’s regime by capture and/or killing of Kim Jong-un.60 The annual war games conducted by the US and its allies mobilized huge numbers of troops and weapons to the Korean peninsula. By November 2017 there were three US aircraft carrier fleets and 11 Aegis destroyers, accompanied by 7 South Korean navy ships and 3 Japanese MSDF warships, including the 19,500-ton mini aircraft carrier Izumo, in close proximity to the Korean peninsula.61 US Air Force B-1 bombers, known to inflict especially high levels of fear on Koreans because of their nuclear bomb-carrying role, flew in periodically from Guam to criss-cross the peninsula, escorted by fighters of Japan’s Air Self Defense Force and South Korea’s Air Force. The Japanese contribution to the build-up of such force was in addition to the regular 50,000 US troops based in Japan and Korea, the 7th Fleet’s home-port at Yokosuka 59

60 61

Wada, op. cit. Lee Jin-man, “The many North Korean policies of the Trump administration,” The Atlantic Monthly, April 2017. Wada, “Kita chosen kiki” op. cit., p. 102. Taoka Shunji, “Chugoku ni yori jitsugen shita Kita Chosen no ‘jishku’,” Shukan kinyobi, 24 Novemvber 2017, p. 39.

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and the major Air Force and Marine bases at Yokota, Sasebo, Kadena, Futenma and elsewhere. The year ended with the December “Operation Vigilant Ace” exercise (4 to 8 December), which brought 12,000 American and Korean soldiers, along with 230 warplanes including the F-35 Lightning IIs (which can fly at speeds of 1,931 kms per hour while carrying nuclear bombs and bunker busters).62 Refusing to be “compelled,” North Korea stepped up the tempo and intensity of its tests, including two in July of apparent ICBMs. In August 2017, Trump told Republican Congressman Lindsey Graham that there would indeed be many deaths, but “they’re going to die over there, they’re not going to die here.”63 President Trump emerged briefly from his New Jersey golf resort to threaten North Korea with “fire and fury, and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before,”64 eliciting an equally pugnacious response from the commander of North Korea’s army that “sound dialogue is not possible with such a guy bereft of reason”65 and a warning that it was preparing to launch missiles towards the American territory (and major military facilities) of Guam. That was followed, on 3 September, by the test explosion of what appeared to be a hydrogen bomb,66 North Korea’s 6th and most powerful by far nuclear test (at least ten times the size of the Hiroshima bomb of 1945) followed on 15 September by an intermediate range ballistic missile which soared over Northern Japan on a 3,700 kilometer trajectory out into the Pacific and, on 28 November, by an ICBM (Hwa-song-15) test that lofted a 40 to 50 ton load to an altitude of around 4,500 kilometers, indicating the capacity to reach targets within a range of around 13,000 kilometers. Some of the missiles passed “over” Japan, stirring outrage from Prime Minister Abe, but since they did so at a height of around 550 kilometers, well above the so-called Karman Line that defines 62 63

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AAP Reuter, 4 December 2017. Uri Friedman, “Lindsey Graham reveals the dark calculus of striking North Korea,” The Atlantic (online), August 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/ archive/2017/08/lindsey-graham-north-korea/535578/ Peter Baker and Choe Sang-hun, “Trump threatens ‘fire and fury’ against North Korea if it threatens US,” New York Times, 8 August 2017 “North Korean military says Trump is ‘bereft of reason’,” CBS News, 9 August 2017. It may have reached 250 kilotons, almost 17 times greater than the Hiroshima weapon. (Michele Ye Hee Lee, “North Korea’s latest nuclear test was so powerful it reshaped the mountain above it,” 8BTIJOHUPO
1PTU, 14 September 2017.

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the beginning of “Outer Space” (at 100 kilometers), so in legal terms Japan had no standing to protest. On 19 September, he addressed the United Nations General Assembly in a speech for which it is hard to think of any match in terms of ferocity, deriding Kim Jong-un by referring to him as “rocket man . . . on a suicide mission,” threatening that North Korea stood to be “wiped out,” and the US would be “forced to totally destroy” it unless it submitted.67 Days later, Kim Jong-un responded in person that “I will surely and definitively tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire,” making Trump “pay dearly” for his speech threatening North Korea’s “total destruction.” North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho added before the UN General Assembly that Trump was the one “on a suicide mission,” whose “insult to the supreme dignity” of North Korea had made “inevitable” a rocket’s “visit to the US mainland.” In November, speaking before the South Korean National Assembly (as summarized by Wada Haruki), Trump expressed the wish: “From the bottom of his heart that such an evil and immoral state should be destroyed and that its people should be liberated. No compromise. No negotiations.”68

On that, he and Japan’s Abe were of one mind. From time to time, other US officials, notably Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, ariticulated a softer appoach, declaring before the UN Security Council on 28 April that while the US insisted on a denuclearized peninsula it was “not pushing for regime change, and (in December) expressing readiness to begin “talks without preconditions,” hinting that CVID was not necessarily the US absolute position.69 However, the formal US-Japan agreement on the principle of CVID, and president’s almost simultaneous (12 December) reference to the government of North Korea as “a vile dictatorship” cancelled out any sign of flexibility that Tillerson might have intended. 67

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Jesse Johnson, “Trump threatens total destruction of North Korea,” Japan Times, 20 September 2017. Wada Haruki, “The US-North Korean crisis and Japan’s responsibility,” The AsiaPaific Journal – Japan Focus, 20 November 2017. Tillerson said it would be “not realistic to say we’re only going to talk if you come to the table ready to give up your (nuclear) program.” (Jesse Johnson, “In a moive that could alienate Japan, Tillerson says US willing to talk to North Korea ‘without preconditions’,” Japan Times, 13 December 2017.

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Though it held the potential for utter catastrophe for Japan (and indeed all states), a mood of resigned readiness for war slowly mounted in Japan. The government was spending large sums on advertisements designed to feed fear and hostility at North Korea.70 On the occasion of missile launches, Japanese railway companies suspend their service, cities and towns conduct public drills in readiness for possible nuclear attack, TV programs are interrupted with “J-Alert” messages that missiles have been launched and children learn to crawl under their desks and cringe in fear. The nuclear shelter construction industry thrives.71 The North Korean “threat” helps Abe justify stepped up military spending, militarization of the frontier islands (Ishigaki, Miyako, and Yonaguni), and the construction of facilities for the US Marine Corps in Northern Okinawa and in Guam and the Marianas (as discussed in other chapters). It also helps prepare the ground for Abe’s grand design, revision of the constitution. Deputy Prime Minister Aso Taro was not alone in attributing Abe’s substantial electoral victory of October 2017 in large part to the North Korean threat.72 Continuing high-level war preparation and daily speculation as to its likelihood carries rising risk of war actually breaking out. In such a case, Abe’s closeness to President Trump, and his ongoing steps to integrate Japan’s Self Defense Forces with the US military, ensure that Japan would be immediately involved as a belligerent, US bases in Japan would be bound to an even more important role in a 21st century Korean War than they had in the 20th century one. Japan’s chain of 23 nuclear reactors spread along the coast facing North Korea, some with substantial pools of radioactive waste, constitute potentially catastrophic targets. Sanctions and Law

The eighth, ninth, and tenth sets of UN Security Council-mandated sanctions on North Korea, (under resolutions of 6 August, 11 September, and 22 December 2017) forbade, inter alia, the export of coal, iron, iron ore, lead, lead ore, rare earth metals, seafood, and 70

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Ide Hiroyuki, “’Kyofushin surikomi’ ni hihan dai,” Shukan kinyobi, 7 July 2017, p. 5. Michael Penn, “North Korea’s threat boosts bomb shelter sales in Japan,” Al Jazeera, 28 June 2017. Aso made, and then withdrew, this comment, See Kyodo, “Test-happy Pyongyang accuses Abe of ‘hysteric’ campaigning to win election,” Japan Times, 26 October 2017

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textiles, and the import of electrical and industrial equipment, transportation vehicles and vessels. They drastically cut crude oil and refined petroleum imports and ordered cancellation of labor export contracts and the return home of all overeas worker detachments, “blocking fuel, ships, and workers” as the New York Times put it.73 It amounted to economic and financial strangulation. Sanctions to be legitimate must be strictly targeted and not indiscriminate or punitive. Yale University legal scholar, W. Michael Reisman, spells out the rule that: “Every lawful use of coercion against other human beings must be necessary, must be proportional to that necessity, and must be capable of differentiating between those who are actively ranged against you and noncombatants.”74

The steps mandated by the Security Council could scarcely satisfy this rule. As White House Homeland Security adviser, Thomas P. Bossert, put it in December 2017, the US had “used every lever short of starving the North Korean people to death.” 75 Beyond such comprehensive sanctions, however, the US and Japan took the lead in orchestrating steps designed to make life as difficult as possible for North Korea and its people. Countries closely dependent on the US vied in adopting punitive measures. Thus Australia in October 2017 refused visas to an under-19 North Korean soccer team to compete in the Asian Football Federation championships.76 “Hosting the team,” said Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, “would be contrary to the government’s strong opposition to North Korea’s illegal nuclear and missile development programs.”77 Two months later, Japan issued visas to another North Korean team to compete in the East Asian Soc73

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Rick Gladstone and David E. Sanger,”Security Council tightens economicv ise on North Korea, blocking fuel, ships, and workers,” New York Times, 22 December 2017. For Security Council Resolutions from 2006 to 2017, see “UN Security Council Committees established pursuant to Resolution 1718 (2006),” http:// www.un.org/sc/suborg/en/sanctions/1718/resolutions/ Reisman, W. Michael, “Sanctions and International Law” (2009).Faculty Scholarship Series. Paper 3864. http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/3864/ Thomas P. Bossert, quoted in Glandsone and Sanger, op. cit. Julie Bishop, “Failure to check North Korea could embolden others to pursue deadly weapons,” Sydney Morning Herald, 12 October 2017. Tom Minear,”North Korea’s under-19 soccer team blocked from entering Australia,” Herald-Sun, 10 October 2017

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cer championships – its hosting of the forthcoming (2020) Olympic Games might be at risk if it did otherwise – but it sanctioned them by announcing in advance that it would not pay them any prize money.78 Both were examples of the sort of collective punishment principle against which, rightly, Japan and Australia might take exception when practiced by North Korea. Whether it would advance the cause of North Korean de-nuclearization was open to doubt. Beyond such trivial but telling measures, the two countries cooperated readily with the US in orchestrating measures to make it impossible for North Korea to engage in international trade or banking at all [italics added], and to compel countries around the world to sever connections with it. When Acting Assistant Secretary of State Susan Thornton called for “all countries to join us in cutting all trade and financial links with North Korea,”79 she was calling in effect for the kind of embargo that had been applied (with catastrophic consequences) to Japan in 1941. Blockade is an act of war. While elites are likely to exploit the sanctions measures to rally support and crush dissent, the people of North Korea will be left to suffer as exports are slashed and energy imports squeezed.80 The combination of UN-imposed sanctions and punitive measures adopted independently by the US and Japan is likely, however, to be counter-productive, reinforcing the regime’s determination not to surrender (even if, as Vladimir Putin put it, it means the people having to eat grass).81 President Trump’s threat of “total destruction” of North Korea82 must qualify also as genocidal, and therefore as an offense not only under 78

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“Sakka Higashi Ajia E-1 senshuken, Kita Chosen wa shokin nashi, renmei ga kettei,” Mainichi shimbun, 8 December 2017. Susan Thornton, statement to Senate Committee on Banking etc, US Department of State, “Evaluating sanctions enforcement and policy options,” 28 September 2017 https://www.state.gov/p/eap/rls/rm/2017/09/274472.htm The falure of the summer rains in 2017 had already caused the country to be “unable to properly feed its people, including soldiers…” (Justin McCurry, “Drought and now sanctions add to North Korea’s hardships,” (VBSEJBO
8FFLMZ, 1 September 2017). Generally on the impact of the sanctions, see Peter Hayes and David von Hippel, “Sanctions on North Korean oil imports: Impacts and efficiency,” NAPSNet Special Report, September 05, 2017, https://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-specialreports/sanctions-on-north-korean-oil-imports-impacts-and-efficacy/ Justin McCurry and Tom Philips, “Putin calls for dialogue to avert a catastrophe,” (VBSEJBO
8FFLMZ, 8 September 2017. Peter Baker and Choe Sang-hun, “Trump threatens ‘fire and fury’ against North Korea if it threatens US,” New York Times, 8 August 2017

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the UN Charter but also under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The offense is committed both by those (Trump) who utter it but also by those (like Abe) who endorse and encourage it.83 The matter of UN sanctions is especially sensitive because of the peculiar responsibility borne by the UN as an organization for the “Korea problem,” first by its dividing the country in 1947, and then by war from 1950, when it intervened against its own charter in a Korean civil war and lent a cloak of legitimacy to countless massacres. South Korean researchers today estimate that “around 1 million civilians were killed by the government-led massacres during the [Korean] war.”84 “Government-led,” when referring to the Korean War that began on 25 June 1950, means under the aegis of the United Nations. Multiple war crimes were committed by “UN” forces at places such as Taejeon and Nogunri, or by mass bombing and napalming, or by the deliberate destruction of the infrastructure of daily life, including dams and power stations.85 Japan at that time was not a direct belligerent because it lacked sovereignty (being under US occupation), but the war was in large measure fought from US bases in Japan and involved the mobilization of the Japanese National Railways, Coastguard and Red Cross, and war-related US special procurements helped feed Japan’s first post-war economic boom, so that what for Korea was devastation was for Japan a boom. As Japan today plays a leading role in pushing the UN back towards the confrontation and conflict of the 1950s, it is an uncomfortable thought that it (and the UN itself ) might be guilty of war crimes against North Korea. The UN today can only have moral credibility in addressing the Korean problem to the extent that it faces its responsibility for such war crimes and for almost seven decades-long neglect of (and therefore continuing complicity) in US nuclear intimidation of North Korea. It is surely time to bring North Korea in from the cold of more than 100 years as colony, divided state, and global outsider. An imaginative Japanese national leadershio would take steps to convert the “North Korean threat” into opportunity, forging a foreign policy that balanced 83

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Japan from 2007 is a member and subject to ICC jurisdiction, while the US is a signatory but has yet to submit the agreement to Congress. Choi Ha-young, “Moon sheds light on dark history,” The Korea Times, 21 August 2017. http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/08/356_235084.html/ Gavan McCormack (with Kim Dong-choon), “Grappling with Cold War History: Korea’s embattled Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” Japan Focus, 21 February 2009. http://japanfocus.org/products/topdf/3056/

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close cooperation with the US alongside close cooperation with East Asian neighbor states in the construction of a regional community that could take steps to resolve North Korea’s legitimate security concerns while insisting on William Perry’s “Three No’s” and the Russian and Chinese “double suspension.” RUSSIA AND THE PUTIN PLAN

In a remarkable meeting that passed almost unnoticed in the Western and Japanese media,86 the two Koreas (South and North), Japan, Russia and China met at Vladivostok in September 2017 under the auspices of the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF), a relatively new (formed only in 2015) Russian initiative to promote the development of its Eastern zone. The five states of the Beijing Six Party Conference (absent only the United States) proceeded in low key, consensual mode to endorse (or in the case of North Korea at least “not oppose”) what may be called the Putin plan. It dealt not with large security matters but with economic cooperation, railways and pipelines, but its implications were far from mundane. The Vladivostok parties looked to open multiple lines of cooperation and communication across North Korea, extending Siberian oil and gas pipelines to the two Koreas and Japan and opening railways and ports linking them across Siberia to China, the Middle East, South Asia, and Europe. South Korea’s President Moon projected his understanding of this within the frame of what he called “Northeast Asia-plus,” which involved construction of “nine bridges of cooperation” (gas, railroads, ports, electricity, a northern sea route, shipbuilding, jobs, agriculture, and fisheries),87 embedding the Korean peninsula in the frame of the Russian and Chinese-led BRICS, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) organizations, extending and consolidating those vast, China- and Russia-centered geo-political and economic groupings. Though billed as “economic,” and having no explicit “security” element, the Vladivostok meet was nevertheless one that would go a long way towards meeting North Korea’s security con86

87

For two exceptions, Pepe Escobar, “Mr Trump, Tear down this (Korean) wall,” Asia Times, 16 September 2017, and Tanaka Sakai, “Puchin ga Kita chosen mondai o kaiketsu suru,” Tanakanews online, 20 September 2017. http://tanakanews.com/ “Moon daitoryo,” op. cit.; James O’Neill, “North Korea and the UN sanctions merry go round,” New Eastern Outlook, 18 September 2017. https://thedailycoin. org/2017/09/18/north-korea-un-sanctions-merry-go-round/

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cerns and making redundant its nuclear and missile programs. Under it, the Beijing Six Party Talks formula of 2003–2008 would become “Five Plus One,” with the United States reduced to non-participant “observer.” Unstated, but plainly crucial, North Korea would accept the security guarantee of the five (Japan included), refrain from any further nuclear or missile testing, shelve (“freeze”) its existing programs and gain its longed for “normalization” in the form of incorporation in regional groupings, the lifting of sanctions and normalized relations with its neighbor states, without surrender. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of this Vladivostok gathering was the participation of the Japanese Prime Minister Abe and his Foreign Minister Kono Taro along with Presidents Xi of China, Putin of Russia, and Moon of South Korea. The Abe government had till then matched Trump in uncompromising hostility to North Korea, and had just weeks earlier formally agreed with the US that CVID, North Korean submission, was the only way forward. Yet it appears to have responded positively to the Putin plan, which suggested that a diplomatic “Plan B” might be under active consideration in Tokyo. The Putin Plan process held the potential for opening a path for Japan to re-negotiate its relationship with the US away from clientelism towards an equal, friendly bilateral relationship, with bases liquidated. It could be expected to lead in due course to diplomatic recognition and a resolution of the complaints of the parties, completing the Japan-North Korean reconciliation process that was begun but then suspended under Prime Minister Koizumi (in 2002). North (and South) Korea would become points of Japanese engagement with the burgeoning regional development groupings, steps in the path of regional cooperation and community building, towards the ultimate goal of a post-San Francisco trans-Pacific regional peace and cooperation community replacing the “hub and spokes” US-hegemonic, San Francisco Treaty system. Japanese reports suggest that Abe was seriously considering it,88 presumably as a first step towards a comprehensive, long overdue, post-Cold War re-think of regional relationships. However, other reports from well-informed sources suggested, unsur88

Well-known Japanese public intellectual and media figure, Tahara Soichiro, reports having been summoned for discussion by Abe, whereupon he outlined a regional plan along the lines suggested here, drawing an enthusiastic response from the Prime Minister. (Tahara Soichiro, in Shukan Asahi, 22 September 2017, as noted in Jinbo, op. cit., at p. 72.)

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prisingly, that US pressure was being brought to bear to put the kibosh on any such radical shift.89 For Putin and Abe, the Vladivostok meet was also a chance to continue discussions on bilateral problems. Despite the six and more decades from San Francisco, and more than seven since the guns fell silent in 1945, the two countries still have to normalize relations or to negotiate a friendship treaty. The dispute over the “Northern islands” (the Southern Kuriles) between Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula and Japan’s Hokkaido, seized by the then Soviet Union in the final month of World War II) remains unresolved. However, Prime Minister Abe has met more than a dozen times with Putin in the five years of his second term and the two have established a certain rapport. When he hosted a Putin visit in December 2016 in his home prefecture of Yamaguchi, speculation was rife that they might strike an agreement for the return, or partial return, to Japan of the islands. It did not happen but it may have become a little less far-fetched. Reversion to Japan of the two smaller island groups (7 per cent by area of the territory as a whole), Habomai and Shikotan, had been agreed in principle in 1956, only to have Japan withdraw under pressure from a United States fearful that reconciliation between Japan and the Soviet Union might lead to Japan slipping out of the bi-polar Cold War system into neutralism. The disposition of the two larger islands, Kunashiri (Kunashir) and Etorofu (Iturup), however, presents greater difficulty. These are very large islands indeed, Etorofu even two and a half-times larger than Okinawa Island at the country’s other extremity. A transfer of sovereignty after nearly 70 years would not be easy but with a positive disposition on both sides an acceptable formula should be conceivable, with suitable face-saving formula, perhaps postponing their legal disposition to an indeterminate future while focussing in the interim on cooperative development and conservation. Normalizing relations with either or both of North Korea and Russia would undoubtedly be difficult for Japan to explain to Washington, but it would go a long way towards recasting the region’s diplomatic and security frame and a Japan that could contemplate doing either would no longer be a client state. The Vladivostok conference showed that such mammoth schemes, hitherto little more than pipe dreams, were back on drawing boards in Moscow and Tokyo as well as Beijing, 89

According to sources noted by Jinbo Taro, “Media hihyo” (119), Sekai, November 2017, pp. 65–72.

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Seoul, and Pyongyang. On all sides the agenda of bridges and tunnels of communication replacing confrontation and military build-up and linking Japan and Korea with the Eurasian continent is “on the table.” It would not be easy for Putin to allow an island reversion that brought US naval presence (under the US-Japan Security Treaty) to his very front-door, or for the US government to agree to creating an exclusion zone, exempting the islands and their surrounding seas from the US-Japan-protected Northwestern Pacific zone. However, at least one veteran Japanese commentator believes that Abe might have decided to concede precisely this point – accepting a partial reversion, provided the US Navy is excluded from the land and sea zone that reverts.90 Discussion between the two countries is by no means confined to territory and islands. The two have drawn up their lists of favored schemes, whittled down by 2016 to thirty “priority projects.” ranging widely across the development of Eastern Siberia and Northern Russia, especially resources (oil and gas), but also infrastructural projects (pipelines, railroads and ports). At their most ambitious, they include a railway crossing by tunnel under the Soya [La Perouse] Strait between Hokkaido and Sakhalin and a bridge across the Mamiya [Tartar] Strait between Sakhalin and Siberia (just 7.3 kilometers at its narrowest point), establishing a through rail link from Japan via the Trans-Siberian and BAM railway systems to China, Russia, India, the Middle East and Europe.91 The Vladivostok conference showed that such mammoth schemes, hitherto little more than pipe dreams, were back on drawing boards in Moscow and Tokyo (and now also Beijing, Seoul, and Pyongyang). On all sides the agenda of bridges and tunnels of communication replacing confrontation and military build-up and linking Japan and Korea with the Eurasian continent and beyond attracts interest. To proceed with such plans, however, would be to relativize and downgrade the Ampo security relationship (which Abe has repeatedly insisted he is intent upon reinforcing) and it would signify a crack in 90

91

Sato Masaru, “Hoppo ryodo ga Ampo no tekiyo jogai ni naru kanosei,” Shukan kinyobi, 14 October 2016, pp. 36–7. At 43 kilometers long and up to 70 meters deep, the Soya Strait would be an expensive project but probably no more technically difficult than the existing Japanese Seikan tunnel under the Tsugaru Strait between Honshu and Hokkaido (53 kilometers long and 140 meters deep). Kiriyama Yuichi, “Shiberia tetsudo no Hokkaido enshin, Roshia ga keizai kyoryoku de yobo,” Shukan ekonomisuto, 15 November 2016, p. 22.

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the edifice of the San Francisco Treaty system. A Japan that could contemplate normalizing relations with either or both of North Korea and Russia would no longer be a client state. Any such moves would signify a thorough recasting of the region’s diplomatic and security frame. SOUTH-WESTERN FRONTIER ISLANDS – YONAGUNI, MIYAKO, AND ISHIGAKI

Located at the farthest periphery from the national capital (even though at the heart of the global economy’s most dynamic sector), Japan’s South-Western or Frontier Islands stretching 500 to 600-kilometers from Okinawa Island to Taiwan lack direct transport or communications links with neighboring Taiwan (or China) and suffer fiscal, demographic, social, and economic decline. What distinguishes the islands is the absence of US military installations. Undefended, throughout the Cold War they posed no threat to anyone and so were themselves unthreatened. Yonaguni, farthest from Tokyo and in effect an offshore island of Taiwan whose mountains are to be seen in the distance, has suffered perhaps most. Its population declined steadily, from a peak half a century ago of over 10,000 people to 1,500 as of 2016. 92 The neo-liberal “reform” measures of devolution, decentralization and deregulation adopted by Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro (2001–2006) forced smaller local government entities to merge into larger, more “efficient” (and less costly) ones. The block grants to regional self-governing entities were slashed and branch offices of national justice and immigration departments and the local weather observation station were closed.93 Its sense of crisis strong, Yonaguni Island went farthest of the outlying islands in developing a distinctive “Vision,” inspired at least in part by the efforts of Governor Ota Masahide with his “Cosmopolitan City” Okinawa project in the 1990s. In 2004, Yonaguni conceived of a future 92

93

On Yonaguni, Gavan McCormack, “Yonaguni: Dilemmas of a Frontier island in the East China Sea,” The Asia-Pacific Joiurnal - Japan Focus, 30 September 2012, and “The end of the post-war? The Abe government, Okinawa, and Yonaguni Island,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 5 December 2014. http://apjjf. org/2014/12/49/Gavan-McCormack/4233.html/ According to Mayor Hokama, speaking with Sakurai Yoshiko, 2 September 2009. Sakurai Yoshiko, “Tokushu – kokubo saizensen o ninau saihate no shima ‘Yonaguni’ rupo,” Shukan shincho, 1 October 2009, http://yoshiko-sakurai.jp/ index.php/2009/10/01/.

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that sought to combine island autonomy and cooperation with neighbor states in a relatively “open-border,” regional cooperation frame. Its orientation would shift from exclusive focus on its “Japan” links to take advantage of its relative closeness to the coasts of Taiwan and China, and even Hong Kong and Manila. It depended, however, on a loosening of the ties of the nation state so as to allow it to negotiate an “open seas” zone, or a Hong Kong-style “one country, two systems” formula of semi-autonomy and precisely for that reason was no more successful than Governor Ota’s. Both failed the scrutiny of the bureaucrats at the helm of the nation state because they implied a diminishing of their powers and prerogatives. Instead, following a US naval intelligence-gathering visit to the island in 2007 a radically different kind of “vision” began to gather support, one in which Yonaguni’s future was military-centered.94 Hokama Shukichi, elected mayor in 2005 as a “Vision” proponent, gradually came to favor this diametrically opposite path. Re-elected in 2009, he made overtures to the government over the possibility of securing a SDF base for the island. With the collapse of the Hatoyama (2009–2010) agenda of close relations with China and construction of an East Asian Community, the national government from 2010 was enthusiastic. The National Defense Program Outlines adopted by Cabinet in December identified the military modernization of China as part of the “security environment surrounding Japan” and outlined a “dynamic defense force” to substitute for the existing “basic defense force” concept.95 In August 2011 the Democratic Party government announced the decision to deploy small units of SDF (including a coastal surveillance unit) to Yonaguni as part of “Japan-US dynamic defense cooperation” designed to close “windows of deterrence” against China. By late 2012, defense of the South-Western islands was accorded “the highest priority.”96 The rising tension over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands from the fall of 2011 helped focus attention on the SDF base proposal. Ishigaki City, Yonaguni Island’s closest and most important island neighbor, elected a conservative mayor and City Assembly in September 2010, thereby ending 16 years of “reform” government, and mayor Nakayama Yoshi94 95 96

“Dunan no kuju,” part 4, Ryukyu shimpo, 12 July 2012. Japan, Ministry of Defense, Summary of National Defense Guidelines, FY2011. Minister of Defense Morimoto Satoshi, quoted in Chico Harlan, “With China’s rise, Japan shifts to the right,” 8BTIJOHUPO
1PTU, 21 September 2012.

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taka opened the island port to SDF port visits and began to issue calls to enforce Japanese sovereignty and control over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands (on which see below). His city administration (under which the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands were nominally included) also inaugurated a “Senkaku Islands Colonization Commemoration Day.” Between 2011 and 2015, Yonaguni was torn by debate over the proposed SDF base. Pro- and anti-base petitions circulated, first attracting a majority for the proposal and then one against it, and opinion poll evidence pointed to a majority opposed to the project.97 In 2012, a petition calling for a plebiscite on the issue was signed by 588 people,98 but a special meeting of the City Assembly in September voted 3:2 not to follow it.99 Mayor Hokama pressed ahead with negotiations and in August 2013 was returned for a third term as mayor by a slim majority (553:506). In August 2014 the town assembly by three votes to two confirmed the agreement. Finally, an island referendum in February 2015 resulted in a “Yes” to the SDF (632 votes to 445). Few “local government” elections in recent Japanese history had been as consequential, as fiercely contested, and as narrowly determined. A site was quickly chosen, barracks and other facilities built, and a 160-strong Ground Self Defense Force (GSDF) unit marched in in March 2016. Mayor Hokama insisted that his motive in calling for an SDF presence was local development, not national security. It was not, he insisted, that he feared any “China threat,” simply that there was no other way to focus national attention on the island and to bring in new blood in the form of young people who would stimulate local businesses and help keep the island economically afloat. 100 His campaign thus focussed not on “defense” but on the economy. Benefiting from national government subsidies tied to the acceptance of the base, he promised free school lunches, a waste incinerator, town water and 97

98

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514 (roughly 43 per cent of the electorate) for the project, and 556 (roughly 46 per cent of the electorate) against it, seeking cancellation of the invitation and return to the principles of the “Vision.” (Details in McCormack,”The end of the post-war?” op. cit.) “588 ninbun no shomei teishutsu,” Yaeyama mainichi shimbun, 25 July 2012. (Scrutineers subsequently ordered deletion of some of these, reducing the final number to 544.) “Yonaguni jumin tohyo joreian, hantai tasu de hiketsu,” Okinawa taimusu, 24 September 2012. Interviewed by this author, 15 November 2011.

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sewerage systems, a sports ground, and an optical fiber internet connection.101 It remained to be seen what long-term effect the base presence would have. By 2017, thanks to the coastal surveillance unit and their families Yonaguni’s population had suddenly “jumped” from 1500 to 1715, island revenue had been boosted by around 58 million yen (base land rental) and there were 13 additional children attending the island’s elementary school. At a mundane but significant level, the block of around 200 voting age soldiers and their spouses could prove decisive in future local government elections.102 Once the soldiers had moved in, however, it was hard to imagine them ever leaving. The character of the island was forever changed. As the Yonaguni GSDF unit began the surveillance of Chinese shipping and other communications, those who remembered the consequences of an Okinawan role in defense of “mainland” Japan in 1945 contemplated the new arrangements with deep misgivings. Whatever else it gained, Yonaguni could be now assured of a spot on missile target lists in Chinese contingency plans. Parts of the island chain, including notably the Miyako and Yaeyama (Yonaguni, Iriomote, and Ishigaki) island groups front, or actually straddle, the First Chinese line, and the Miyako Strait (between Okinawa Island and Miyako Island), offers a crucial access path for Chinese naval forces to and from the Pacific, via international waters (but within Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Apart from Yonaguni, Miyako, Ishigaki and Amami are also all at various stages of negotiation towards the introduction of 500–800-person security and missile forces.103 Miyako has further potential for a US and possibly SDF military role in that its civil Shimoji airport (with a 3,000 meter runway) is known to be under-utilized and has from time to time been noted as a potential site for further military expansion, despite pledges at the time of its construction that this would never happen. Japanese bases on these frontier islands would supplement and reinforce the American ones concentrated on Okinawa Island. And, as military affairs critic Handa Shigeru points out, 101

102

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“‘Yonaguni, Hokama shi 3 sen’ kenkyo ni shima no yuwa o hakare,” editorial, Ryukyu shimpo, 12 August 2013. “‘Kawaru anzen hosho’ Yonaguni ni jieitai, uruoi to fuan, haibi ichinen,” Asahi shimbun, 27 March 2017. “Kawaru anzen hosho,” ibid.

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the recently (2015) revised Defense Guidelines provide for the Japanese Self Defense Forces to be able to give “rear support” to the US military in the event of a cross-strait Taiwan crisis.104 The missile defense units deployed against the North Korean “threat” are of dubious efficacy against objects passing far above Japan’s sovereign air space. Yet the furore surrounding their deployment helped create a mood of fear and threat, distracting attention from the steady escalation of US and allied war games in the East China Sea area,105 and generating a following wind for Tokyo’s planned military expansion into the frontier islands. One of the country’s most senior defense experts, former deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary, Yanagisawa Kyoji, stated that the deployment had “no military meaning” (gunjiteki no imi wa nai) but it had apparently been designed to create a mood of fear and instability and to accustom remote islands to a military presence.106 The Miyako unit’s mission would be to watch over the adjacent waters of the Miyako Strait, holding a battery of 200 kilometer range surface to sea missiles in readiness for the possibility of being ordered to close the Chinese naval route to the Pacific Ocean, bottling them up within the so-called First Line of Defense. That of course would be an act of war, inviting devastating Chinese retaliation. Military plans appear to be predicated on Sino-Japanese hostilities occurring at some point in the Senkaku (Diaoyu)- East China Sea area, in which the islands such as Miyako could be expected to quickly become immersed in battle and islanders find themselves in the line of fire, as happened last in 1945.107 As military planners in Washington and Tokyo see it, the, the key raison d’être for the Okinawa islands as a whole is as a joint US-Japan bastion projecting force where required for the regional and global 104

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Handa Shigeru, “Jieitai haibi ni yureru Yonaguni,” Sekai, August 2017, pp. 152– 157, at p. 157. In annual (March-April) Operations Foal Eagle and Key Resolve, US, South Korean and allied armed forces conduct field exercises that involve mass military mobilization and which North Korea plainly sees as intimidation, or even the possible cover for launch of war. Yanagisawa Kyoji, former deputy chief cabinet secretary, in “PAC 3 haibi ‘imi nai’ moto kanbo fukuchokan-ho,” Okinawa taimusu, 9 April 2012. For a sobering discussion of the military options, Chikazumi Toshimichi, “Senkaku mondai de buryoku funso ga okottara, Miyakojima wa do naru ka,” Miyako mainichi shimbun, 26 July 2016.

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hegemonic project, in the first instance for any Korean peninsula contingency and beyond that for “containing” China. The overall design appears to be to build up surveillance and missile attack forces through Japan’s Frontier Islands capable of bottling up China’s navy within its so-called “first line of defense” and concentrating a particularly strong Japanese military forces around the contested Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands.108 Ironically, the territories to be defended at all costs include in large part islands and seas assigned to China in the draft Sino-Japanese treaty of 1880 and only remaining in Japan’s hands because China then had second thoughts. There is a further, indirect threat faced by people of islands such as Miyako that are targeted for a SDF role face, that of violence against women. On 9 March 2017, after reading reports of the Japanese Ground Self-Defense forces training with US Marines in California during February, newly elected Miyako City councillor, Ishimine Kaori, mother of three and core figure in the movement against SDF deployment to Miyako, wrote in her blog that “even if the US forces themselves do not come to Miyako when the Japanese SDF comes, there are bound to be cases of violent assaults on women.” Her fears were not unfounded. Cases of sexual violence by Japanese service personnel have recently been reported in the vicinity of SDF camps elsewhere in Japan,109 and the closer the ties between US and Japanese forces become as they train and exercise together, the more likely that they come to share sexual and gender mores. A storm of angry protest nevertheless burst around Ishimine.110 On 12 March, she apologized, saying of course she could not make such a prediction with certainty. On 21 March a majority (20 of the 25-person Assembly) passed a resolution calling on her to resign. She refused. On 22 March 15 members absented themselves from the Chamber during Ishimine’s presentation, forcing the suspension of the sitting. On the following day, Ishimine issued a second apology. The bashing she was subjected to was itself a form of “hate speech.” In an October 2017 election, Ishimine lost her seat. 108

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“Nansei shoto susumu rikuji haibi – Mikami kantoku, shinsaku eiga de keisho,” Tokyo Shimbun, 31 March 2017. See discussion by Norimatsu Satoko, “Nihon no guntai ni yoru sei boryoku no tabu–ka koso mondai,” Shukan kinyobi, 31 March 2017, p. 31 (and materials introduced on Norimatsu’s blog: http://peacephilosophy/net/). For one account of the incident and its followup, Watase Natsuhiko, “Sei boryoku no ken-en hyomei shita Miyakojima josei shigi enjo,” Shukan kinyobi, 31 March 2017, pp. 28–29.

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MAGE ISLAND 111

Mage (literally: Horsehair) Island, is strictly speaking not part of Okinawa prefecture, or the Ryukyu Islands, but of the Osumi Island group that lies within Kagoshima Prefecture, about 110 kilometers south of Kagoshima City, 12 kilometers west of Nishinoomote City on Tanegashima Island and 40 kilometers north of the World Heritage island of Yakushima. Its recent story has been one of bureaucratic irresponsibility, corruption, collusion, and environmental abuse on a grand scale, as the Governments of Japan and the United States strive to turn it into a US military training facility, part of the complex concentrated on Okinawa Island. Mage, basically a flat island, has an area of 8.5 square kilometers. The kuroshio warm sea current and seasonal north-westerly winds are such that it is blessed with good (annual 2,300 mms) annual rainfall feeding wetlands, springs and small rivers, including four that flow permanently, and sustaining a rich biodiversity on both sea and land. 112 It is known in particular for its own sub-species of deer, the “Mage deer,” but is (or at least till very recently was) also home to nesting turtles and giant hermit crabs and to several species of killifish (medaka) and over 400 of birds including the ruddy kingfisher and the skylark. Especially in season (May-July), the adjacent seas “boil” with teeming schools of flying fish.113 Its post-1945 vicissitudes make it a window into the failures of regional development policies. At its peak (1959) it supported 528 people (113 families), with an elementary and junior secondary school, who made a living out of cultivation of rice and sugar cane, fishing, and collecting herbs and sea grasses. From the 1960s, however, the state reversed its earlier encouragement to agriculture and investors, strictly speaking speculators, gradually bought up the land and the resi111

112

113

See Gavan McCormack, “Mage - Japan’s island beyond the reach of the law,” The Asia Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 20 February 2012, http://apjjf.org/2012/10/8/ Gavan-McCormack/3694/article.html/ For the chart of the 16 “level five” rivers, Tatsuzawa Shiro, “Mageshima no shizen no miryoku,” in Mageshima kankyo mondai taisaku henshu iinkai (Tatsuzawa et al., ed. Mageshima, takaranojima – yutaka na shizen, rekishi to rankaihatsu, Kagoshima, Nanpo shinsha, 2010, p. 14). See also Tatsuzawa’s essay “‘Mageshima no fushigi na yoru’ ni yosete,” in Ogawa Misako and Harada Mika, Mageshima no fushigi na yoru, Kagoshima, Nanpo shinsha, 2003, pp. 31–33. Population figures taken from Seshita Mitsuyoshi, “Mageshima wa shizen no hoko – mirai no kodomo tachi e no saiko no okurimono,” Mageshima, takaranojima, op. cit., pp. 70–91, passim.

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dents abandoned or were driven off, so that by 1980 the local school closed and the island was declared uninhabited. Successive blueprints were then conceived, adopted, and in due course abandoned: as a tourist development site (“Mage Island Marine Leisure Land”), as a Self Defense Force radar base (1983), an oil storage site (1984), a nuclear waste storage site (ca. 1999), or as a landing site for Japanese space shuttles (late 1990s to ca. 2008). In 1995, ownership (over 99 per cent) passed to the Mage Island Development Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of a Tokyo-based construction company. The island’s owners then began to clear the land. Gradually, the forest shrank and the outlines of an airport of a scale comparable to Tokyo’s Narita or Osaka’s Kansai emerged, featuring one runway 4,200 meters south-north and another 2,400 meters east-west.114 Under the “Reorganization” of US forces agreed in 2006, US carrier-based aircraft were to be transferred from Atsugi, just outside Tokyo, to Iwakuni, in Yamaguchi prefecture, and the idea of incorporating Mage Island as a site for FCLP (Field Carrier Landing Practice) came under consideration. The US military was known to favor the idea because it would mean transferring the FCLP from Io Island, 1,200 kilometers to the west from Atsugi (1,400 from Iwakuni), to the much more convenient Mage, just 400 kilometers from Iwakuni. Mage also featured briefly under the Hatoyama government in 2009 as a possible site for the relocation of the US Marine Corps facility from Futenma. It had the great benefit, for Hatoyama, of being technically not a part of Okinawa prefecture so that a transfer of the Futenma base there would meet his pledge to move the Futenma base “beyond the prefecture.” 115 But in the face of determined local opposition from Nishinoomote City, and with scandal enveloping the island’s owner company, Hatoyama dropped the idea. The idea of Mage as a military base was not forgotten. The East China Sea location, half-completed runways, and the absence of a potentially troublesome population were compelling attractions. In June 2011 the “Two plus Two” meeting of US and Japanese Defense and Foreign Ministers in Washington named Mage as potential site for construction of a Japanese SDF base which US Navy pilots could also use, pleasing the US Navy and bringing the two armed forces into closer cooperation. 114

115

“Kichi yuchi e no dai kaihatsu, shinrin gekigen, Kagoshima, Mageshima, gyosei mokunin,” Asahi shimbun, 10 August 2011. http://www.asahi.com/national/ update/0810/SEB201108100071.html On Hatoyama see, McCormack and Norimatsu, op. cit, pp. 113–136, passim.

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The Japanese state turned a blind or conniving eye as wave after wave of speculative development policies and blueprints washed over this island, whose ultimate end – the island flattened and converted to a military base in the interests of the military establishments of Tokyo and Washington – only became evident to the public from 2007. Between 2007 and early 2012, the Mage Island Development Company closed the island off to researchers, journalists, the public, and even to city or prefectural officials.116 No environmental impact study on the island had been conducted, nor had any formal proposal for airport construction been tabled. A grassroots campaign to save the island drew hundreds of thousands of signatures from residents of towns and villages in the vicinity, and Nishinoomote City began to take steps to gain the access needed to investigate apparent breaches of various laws.117 Aerial photographs made a strong prima facie case that damage caused by unlicensed development has been widespread and serious. Local groups declared the goal of buying back and restoring the island, with a view to turning it into a nature reserve, possibly in association with nearby Yakushima’s World Heritage site (1993). However, in 2016 a deal was announced under which the state was to “buy” the island from its corporate owners and turn it into a joint US-Japan military facility.118 The purchase price was reported to be between several billion and “at least” ten billion yen (roughly twenty to one hundred million dollars).119 Just a few months later, however, in March 2017 an avowed opponent of such appropriation of the island to military purposes was elected mayor of Nishinoomote. The stage was thus set for the opening of a new front in the battle between the state and local communities over the state’s military-first agenda. SENKAKU/DIAOYU

No point in the east China Sea concentrates stronger passions than the group of tiny, uninhabited islands known as Senkaku in Japan and 116

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“Mageshima kenchikibutsu no kazei Tasutonsha ni ichi mo tsuchijin, Kagoshima ken,” Nishi Nihon shimbun, 7 December 2011. Mage deer in particular are thought to have suffered drastic fall in numbers (“Mageshima no shika 10 nen de hangen,” Asahi shimbun, 7 July 2011). “Kuni, Mageshima baishu e,” Ryukyu shimpo, 19 October 2016 “Seifu, Mageshima baishu e mujinto de zatsuon mondai nashi, kassoro ari zosei mo fuyo,” Sankei shimbun, 5 November 2017. “Boeisho, Kagoshima ken Mageshima o baishu e, chikensha to kosho goi,” Mainichi shimbun, 18 November 2016.

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Diaoyu in China and Taiwan, claimed by the governments of Japan, China, and Taiwan and deeply involving the policies and interests of the United States. The group comprises five uninhabited islands, more correctly islets (plus several even smaller outcrops), located 330 kilometers east of the China mainland coast, 170 kilometers northeast of Taiwan, and 170 kilometers north of Yonaguni (or Ishigaki) islands in the Okinawa group. The Japanese cabinet in January 1895 unilaterally annexed two of the islands, claiming to have discovered them and found them to be terra nullius (territory unoccupied or unclaimed by any other country). It later added two others when leasing four in 1896 to a pioneering Japanese entrepreneur and including a fifth in 1921, converting the leasehold rights over the four islands to a freehold grant to the Koga family in 1926.120 Koga and his family remained on the islands till around 1940, withdrawing as the collapse of militarist Japan loomed. Little attention was then paid to them until 1968, when they were identified by the UN’s ECAFE as possibly “the last remaining, richest, as yet unexploited depository of oil and natural gas” in the region. 121 When it came time for negotiations over Okinawan reversion to Japan (1969–1972), the US drew a line between different sectors of its occupied zone, transferring to Japan sovereignty over Ryukyu but only administrative control over Senkaku/Diaoyu. Recent research attributes the decision to split Senkaku from Okinawa for administrative purposes to explicit, Machiavellian design, having the islands function as a “wedge of containment” of China so that a “territorial dispute between Japan and China, especially over islands near Okinawa, would render the US military presence in Okinawa more acceptable to Japan.”122 By sowing the seeds or sparks (hidane) of 120

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See Ivy Lee and Fang Ming, “Deconstructing Japan’s claim of sovereignty over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands,” p. 7. The Asia-Pacific Journal - Japan Focus, 31 December 2012. http://japanfocus.org/-fang-ming/3877/ James C. Hsiung, “Sea Power, Law of the Sea, and a Sino-Japanese East China Sea ‘Resource War’,” in James C. Hsiung, ed, China and Japan at Odds: Deciphering the Perpetual Conflict, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, pp. 133–154, at p. 135. Kimie Hara, “The post-war Japanese peace treaties and China’s ocean frontier problems,” American Journal of Chinese Studies, vol. 11, No. 1, April 2004, pp. 1–24, at p. 23. And see Kimie Hara, $PME
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Territories in the San Francisco System (Abingdon: Taylor and Francis, 2006), especially chapter 7, “The Ryukyus: Okinawa and the Senkaku/Diaoyu disputes.”

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territorial conflict between China and Japan, Japan’s long-term dependence on the US was ensured and the US base presence justified.123 Japan and (mainland) China paid attention to Senkaku/Diaoyu on two subsequent occasions, in 1972 and 1978. At the third of four meetings between Chinese premier Zhou Enlai and Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei on 27 September 1972, Tanaka raised the question of Senkaku/Diaoyu, to which Zhou replied that the matter should be shelved as opening it would complicate and delay the normalization process.124 Six years later, in Japan to negotiate a Peace and Friendship Treaty, Deng Xiaoping reiterated this “shelving” formula, preferring to leave it to “the next generation” to find sufficient wisdom to resolve it.125 Thereafter, for roughly 30 years a modus vivendi held: though occasional landings (by Chinese activists from a Hong Kong base and by Japanese rightists) took place, the two governments tacitly cooperated to prevent them, while Japan abstained from any steps to station personnel on the islands or develop their surrounding seas.126 The Japanese Foreign Ministry denies that there was any “shelving” agreement reached at those Sino-Japanese summits of 1972 and 1978.127 It seems likely there was no formal diplomatic document to such effect, but the exchanges between the two sides were not trivial. Most likely both sides made their respective positions clear but chose to avoid formal negotiations for fear of upsetting the normalization process.128 Japanese scholar Yabuki Susumu accuses the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of “inexcusable and outrageous” behavior in having altered 123

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126 127

128

Toyoshita Narahiko, “Aete hidane nokosu Bei senryaku,” Okinawa taimusu, 12 August 2012. “Senkaku mondai o do omou ka,” or “What do you think about the Senkaku islands?” “The Japan-China Summit meeting between Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka and Premier Zhou Enlai on September 27, 1972” reproduced in Lee and Ming, op. cit. p. 36. See discussion in Toyoshita Narahiko, “Senkaku mondai” to wa nani ka, Iwanami gendai bunko, 2012, pp. 48–50, See the documents reproduced at Lee and Ming, op. cit and discussion in Tabata Mitsunaga, “Ryoyuken mondai o meguru rekishiteki jujitsu,” Sekai, December 2012, pp. 104–113. See Lee and Ming, p. 11. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “The Senkaku Islands,” March 2013, http://www. mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/senkaku/pdfs/senkaku_en.pdf Tabata Mitsunaga, “Ryoyuken mondai o meguru rekishiteki jijitsu,” Sekai, December 2012, pp.104–113, at pp. 107–108

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the Minutes of the Tanaka-Zhou meeting of 1972 and “burned and destroyed” those of the Sonoda-Deng meeting of 1978 lest evidence from either prejudice the official case of undisputed Japanese sovereignty.129 It is an extraordinary charge, but no more shocking than the Foreign Ministry’s deliberate trashing of a vast cache of other Foreign Ministry materials on the eve of Freedom of Information rules being introduced in 2001.130 The shelving understanding, explicit or implicit, continued for nearly forty years to 2010. Then, however, the Democratic Party of Japan’s government arrested the Chinese captain of a fishing ship in waters off Senkaku/Diaoyu insisting that there was “no room for doubt” that the islands were an integral part of Japanese territory, that there was no territorial dispute or diplomatic issue, and that the Chinese vessel was in breach of Japanese law (interfering with officials conducting their duties). Faced with an angry Chinese response it soon backed down and released the captain without pressing charges,131 but thereafter the resolve on both sides hardened and relations soured. From China’s viewpoint, it was striking that Japan concentrated its diplomatic effort not on resolving a bilateral dispute over borders but on widening it to a security matter involving the United States, attaching its highest priority to getting an assurance from the US government that the islands were subject to Article 5 of the US-Japan Security Treaty, the clause that authorizes the US to protect Japan in the case of an armed attack “in territories under the administration of Japan.” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton explicitly endorsed that position in October 2010,132 and the priority for the Abe government facing the Trump administration in 2017 was the assurance that it would maintain that commitment. It means that, while the US continues to acknowledge the administration of Japan over the islands it takes no position on the question of sovereignty. The Government of Japan 129

130 131 132

Susumu Yabuki, “Interview: China-watcher Yabuki says Senkakus are a diplomatic mistake by Japan,” Asahi shimbun, 12 December 2012. Yabuki makes his strongest accusations in his subsequent interview: Yabuki Susumu, interviewed by Mark Selden, “China-Japan territorial conflicts and the US-Japan-China relations in historical and contemporary perspective,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 4 March 2013, p. 3. McCormack and Norimatsu, pp. 57–58. Details in McCormack and Norimatsu, pp. 211–214. “Joint Press availability,” Department of State, 27 October 2010, http://www.state. gov/secretary/rm/2010/10/150110.htm.

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clings to the belief that the United States would be prepared to go to war with China to defend Japan’s claim to uninhabited islands. Henry Kissinger described that belief as “nonsense” when it was articulated in 1971 and there seems no reason to change that assessment today.133 For two of the island group, known even to the Japanese Coastguard under their Chinese names, Huangwei and Chiwei, the government of Japan does not press its claims because they have been under uncontested US control – as a bombing range – for well over half a century. Despite the fact that none of the islands were known to Japan till the late 19th century when they were identified from British naval references, that they were not declared Japanese till 1895 or named until 1900, and that the Japanese claim, not posted diplomatically until 1952, referred at different times to two, three, or sometimes five islands, the consensus in Japan today is that they are incontrovertible, or “koyu,” Japanese territory. A national consensus evolved around certain “koyu” propositions: that there was “no room for doubt” and no dispute as to Japan’s ownership of the islands, that China was threatening Japan’s sovereign territory, and that its challenge called for reaffirmation of the importance of the security alliance with the United States. When Abe Shinzo campaigned for lower house election in 2012 under the overall slogan of “taking back the country,” he pledged not to yield one millimeter of Japan’s “inherent” territory of Senkaku,134 a matter on which there was no dispute, no room for discussion or negotiation. In September 2013, the then Democratic Party government formally purchased and “nationalized” the three larger islands, declaring to the UN General Assembly that they were “intrinsic Japanese territory,” over which there was no dispute and could be no negotiation.135 The intransigent language of Japanese governments on the Senkaku/Diaoyu was reminiscent of 1937, when Japan’s then leader, Konoe Fumimaro, ruled out negotiations with China’s Chiang Kaishek in the fateful months leading to full-scale war with China, and when the national media was similarly self-righteous and dismissive of China’s “unreasonableness” and “provocation.” 136 From 133 134

135 136

Lee and Ming, p. 2 Meeting Deputy Secretary of State William Burns on 15 October, quoted in Tabata, p. 113, Lee and Ming, pp. 4–5. Abe, meeting on 15 October with Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, quoted in Tabata Mitsunaga, “Ryoyuken mondai o meguru rekishiteki jijitsu,” Sekai, December 2012, p. 113.

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China’s viewpoint, modern Japan’s imperialist expansion followed a single line from Ryukyu (1879), Senkaku (1895), Taiwan (1895), to Dongbei or “Manchuria” (1931) leading to full-scale war with China from 1937, justified at the time by “positive diplomacy” to defend the “lifeline” of “inalienable” territorial rights in “ManMo” (Manchuria-Mongolia). That the indispensable “lifeline” now was not the vast plains and mountains of Manchuria and Mongolia but a few uninhabited rocks in the sea, on the very edge of China’s continental shelf, did not diminish the potential they held for conflict. The islands are to China (and Taiwan) an integral part of Chinese territory, illegally appropriated by Japan during the Sino-Japanese War (a “spoil of war”) that should therefore have been returned to China under the Potsdam Agreement. In both cases (People’s Republic and Republic) the claim to Diaoyu rests on history (commencing with the records of the Ming and Qing dynasties) and geography (the continental shelf and the deep gulf that sets the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands apart from the Ryukyu island chain). In April 2013 China declared Diaoyu a “core interest,” and in May the People’s Daily added that the status of Okinawa itself still had to be negotiated. China’s riposte to Abe’s threat of “physical force” came months later when Major-General Luo Yuan declared that China would depend for resolution of the Diaoyu problem on “the elevation of our comprehensive national strength,” to which end it would proceed with mobilizing its forces into Diaoyu waters, so that “when needed we can turn the three major fleets into a fist to draw out the [Japanese] blade.”137 The “Senkaku” issue for Japan carries a “blowback” quality of unassuaged Chinese suspicion over Japan’s long neglected or insufficiently resolved war responsibility, the high-level denials of Nanjing, the periodic right-wing attempts to sanitize history texts, the refusal to accept formal legal responsibility for the victims of the Asia-wide “Comfort Women” slavery system, the periodic visits by Prime Ministers and Diet Members to Yasukuni.138 As The Economist wrote in 2012, “What137

138

“Viewpoint: National strength still to be raised to solve Diaoyu Islands issue,” China Military Online, 17 May 2013. http://english.peopledaily.com. cn/90786/8247941/ Zhang Ning, “‘Diaoyudao’ no haigo no Chugoku no shisoteki bunki,” Gendai shiso, December 2012, pp. 104–112, at p.106.

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ever the legality of Japan’s claim to the islands, its roots lie in brutal empire-building.” 139 However superficially intractable the conflicting state claims to Senkaku/Diaoyu may be, because the prospect of a resolution to the sovereignty question is minimal, it is surely best to set it aside, reverting in effect to the “shelving” agreement of 1972–2010 but combining that with the sort of cooperative arrangements for fisheries and resource extraction in place in parts of this sea before the crisis that erupted in 2010 froze them. Caught between the competing claims of the three state actors, and looking back (by contrast with the rest of Japan) on a long historical memory of friendly relations with China, Okinawa is in an especially delicate and vulnerable position. Its people have learned from bitter experience that militarization does not offer security, and they feel in the depths of their bones that contest over sovereignty, in their regional waters, threatens them. War for the defense of Senkaku would be a “re-run of the battle of the Second World war, with us, Okinawans, the victims,” as Hiyane Teruo of the University of the Ryukyus puts it.140 For its very survival, and to avoid its 1945 fate as “sacrificial stones” for mainland Japan, Okinawa has to find a path from its Cold War role as “keystone” in US military strategy to “bridge stone” linking Japan and its neighbors. In place of the language of “koyu no ryodo,” and of Japan’s national defense plans that since 2010 call for steady military build-up and point to sharpened confrontation with China, Okinawans therefore talk of an Okinawa-centered demilitarized “livelihood zone,” of “a space for co-existence, co-living by Japan, China, and Taiwan, and a symbol of goodwill.” They would turn Okinawa itself into a “peace hub for Asia,”141 extending the Okinawan principle of grassroots democracy so as to negotiate a new kind of future for the East China Sea. 139

140

141

“China and Japan: Could Asia really go to war over these?” The Economist, 22 September 2012. Hiyane Teruo, emeritus professor of the University of the Ryukyus, quoted in “Senkaku kaiketsu e kennai kenkyusha ra shido,” Ryukyu shimpo, 13 January 2013. For the “Urgent Appeal: To Transform Senkaku islands (called Diaoyu Islands in China and Diaoyutai Islands in Taiwan) into a Shared Livelihood Zone for Japan, China, and Taiwan,” by the Okinawa-based “Committee of One Hundred,” 10 January 2013, see http://peacephilosophy.blogspot.ca/2013/02/an-urgent-appealfrom-Okinawa-to-turn.html/

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COMMUNITIES

Perhaps the widest-ranging and most comprehensive economic zone project to date has been the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Following negotiations that began in 2008, it was conceived as a trade and investment agreement between 11 Pacific states including Australia, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Vietnam, and (till 23 January 2017) the United States. It was said to involve 40 per cent of global GDP and one-third of world trade. It was, however, much too multifarious and geographicaly widespread to generate any sense of community. From 2013, the various demands that the US had earlier made of Japan through both official (the Desiderata) and non-official (CSIS) channels were subsumed in this project. Prime Minister Abe committed Japan to it with enthusiasm, seeing it as companion to the Obama government’s China-containing “pivot” to Asia. Though commonly described as a trade agreement, the TPP was actually a comprehensive charter of global corporate governance, designed to maximize economic growth. It was notable for its secret and undemocratic character (while corporate leaders, lawyers and bureaucrats engage in discussions, citizens or NGOs were excluded); its transfer of power from democratically elected governments to corporations (who would gain the right to demand enforcement against member governments); its comprehensiveness (states were to be required to conform their laws, regulations and administrative procedures to 29 chapters of comprehensive rules, of which only a small number related to trade);142 and its exclusion of China. The project may best be seen as an American design (even if abandoned under Trump) to counter China’s growing global influence and to “bring back jobs from China” (as Obama put it in his 2015 State of the Union speech). Abe (in Washington in April 2015) enthused over the TPP’s potential to create a “seedbed for peace,” with “awesome” long-term strategic (sic.) value, as if it were the next, and higher, stage of democracy. US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter was blunter, describing it as “as important to me as a new aircraft carrier.”143 Former (2009–2010) 142

143

Edward Herman refers to the 30,000 word chapter on intellectual property rights which “lays out provisions for instituting a far-reaching, transnational legal and enforcement regime, modifying or replacing existing laws in TPP member states,” its longest section devoted to “enforcement.” (Edward S. Herman, “Trans Pacific Partnership versus equality and democracy,” Z-Net, 27 March 2015.) “TPP deal as important as new aircraft carrier: Pentagon chief,” Japan Times, 7 April 2015.

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Japanese Minister of Agriculture Yamada Masahiko saw it as a design to hand over Japan to the United States.144 Despite the enthusiasm with which Abe pursued the TPP cause, his own government’s estimate was that the gains predicted for the country’s industrial sector would only slightly outweigh the losses (calculated, however, in purely economic terms and without regard to the social and environmental consequences) for its primary industry sector.145 Prefectures heavily dependent on agriculture, forestry and fisheries, such as Hokkaido and Okinawa, would suffer especially greatly.146 The large primary producing countries such as the US, Australia, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, anticipated major expansion into Japanese markets, and the expected result was that Japan’s food self-sufficiency ratio would fall from an already lowest-inOECD 39 per cent (2011) to 27 per cent on a calorie basis.147 By opting for the TPP, Japan would thus be staking the lives and welfare of its people on the avoidance of global famine or catastrophe and continuance of a benign food trading system. Until the advent of Trump, US negotiators were anticipating a tripling of the economic gains that would ensue from Japan’s participation as US corporations gained access to Japan’s medical, pharmaceutical, insurance, and agricultural sectors. However, the election of Donald Trump in November 2016 was followed quickly by US withdrawal. The Abe government, having passed the bill affirming Japanese participation in TPP just weeks earlier on the assumption that it was an unqualified US demand, faced the dilemma of how to respond. For the time being, Australia, Japan and other countries chose to persist, sans the US, in a TPP Mark 2. Three such formulae, all non-, or in a sense anti-San Francisco, warrant mention: the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), founded 2001, membership spanning one-quarter of the world’s land mass and one-third of its population; BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, 144

145

146

147

Yamada Masahiko, “TPP no tsugi ni motorasareru taibei juzoku,” Shukan kinyobi, 20 January 2017. “Japan boosts the Trans-Pacific partnership,” Mireya Solis interviewed by Mohammed Aly Sergie, Council on Foreign Relations, 9 August 2013. See editorials on 16 March 2013 in Ryukyu shimpo (”TPP sanka hyomei, amari ni sessoku, mubo da) and Okinawa Taimusu (“‘TPP kosho sanka hyomei’ shoraizo ga mattaku mienai”). “Government estimates Japan GDP to rise 0.66 percentage point by joining TPP,” Mainichi Shimbun, 16 March 2013.

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China, South Africa),148 founded 2006, with three billion people, its own development bank, and much of its trade conducted in “own” currencies rather than US dollar;149 and BRI (Belt and Road Initiative), a global infrastructure project launched by Chinese President Xi Jinping in October 2013 and sometimes referred to as a “New Silk Road,” to which, by 2017, more than 60 countries had signed up to multiple trans-continental projects in (high-speed) rail, road, maritime, and fiber optic communications. A fourth organization may be added, the 6PT (the “Six-Party Talks” or Beijing Conference on Korea) which between 2003 and 2008 brought together the leaders of North East Asia (North and South Korea, Russia, China, South Korea and Japan), plus the US, to negotiate matters of crucial shared interest. North Korea withdrew in 2008, but this organ probably still constitutes the best formula for resolution of the “North Korea problem” and may be in a state of suspension rather than exhaustion. Of these, the SCO and BRICS projects perhaps excluded Japan by definition, but the potential attraction for Japan of participation in such grand, global infrastructural project as BRI was as obvious as the fact of its being a “Chinese” design made it problematic. Despite the flurry of many-hued projects in the wake of the collapsing Cold War, concrete steps towards constructing a post-San Francisco treaty system partnership remained at an early stage. Regional economic and cultural linkages proliferate, but a shared sense of history, identity or direction is slower to emerge, and, although Japan and China present their respective visions of a future East Asian order of security and cooperation, a Pax Asia, there is no historical precedent for equal interstate relationships. For either to yield to the other is almost unimaginable while for the two to cooperate on a basis of mutual respect and equality is as unlikely because of the past record as it is crucial to the future of the East Sea region, and indeed the world.

148 149

Joined in 2017 by Egypt, Mexico, Thailand, Guinea and Tajikistan. According to the BRICS home page, member states accounted for more than 50 percent of world economic growth during the deade from 2006 to 2016.

Chapter Six

The Construction State ™

RESILIENCE

More than two decades have passed since I first wrote of what I called Japan’s doken kokka (the “construction state” or “public works state”).1 I used the term to refer to the peculiar public works-centered Japanese political economy in which an “Iron Triangle” of conservative politicians, bureaucrats, and finance and construction industry heads set national investment priorities within the overarching frame of the Zenso, or National Land Development Plan (initiated in 1962), to channel the national savings into construction and public works projects to which in due course they themselves descended, by silken parachute, to lucrative, post-retirement sinecures. Public works expenditure generated employment and the nation-wide political support mechanisms for the LDP-managed state. Its overarching concern was to maximize GDP growth. As the US economy centered on the military and military-related sector, and the European on the welfare state, so the Japanese was built on this doken kokka. Begun in the early post-war decades when reconstruction necessitated heavy social infrastructure spending and growth was so rapid that public investment programs often refunded debts, the system was refined but it became gradually pathological under Tanaka Kakuei (Prime Minister 1972–1974). Especially from the first oil shock of 1973, pump-priming, public works packages funded by debt-generating bonds became a chosen instrument for pressing forward his grand 1

See my “The construction state: The pathology of the Doken Kokka,” chapter 1 of The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence, New York, ME Sharpe, 1996, pp. 25–77. 167

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design for “remodelling the Japanese archipelago.”2 Fiscal conservatism within the LDP and the Ministry pf Finance gave way to fiscal activism and interest politics, public investment becoming the instrument to create demand and employment. The second, or “New” Zenso (1969– 1976) began the spiral into “extrastructure” (works undertaken for their own sake or without obvious social need) investment). Deficitdependence deepened, debt snowballed, environmental costs escalated. In June 1990 the Kaifu Toshiki government (August 1989 to February 1991) under heavy pressure at the “structural impediment” trade talks with the United States and as part of the design for expanding domestic demand, launched a program for massive public works spending (naiju kakudai). The initial target was 430 trillion yen spending over 10 years, but just months after the initial promise, the bubble of unsustainable and “future eating” growth burst, leaving its collusion, corruption and fiscal irresponsibility at least partially exposed. Undeterred, however, the Maruyama government in October 1994 adopted a “Basic Plan for Public Investment” that increased the figure to 630 trillion yen which it promised to spend during the period 1995–2007. The fifth Zenso (announced in March 1998 to cover the years to 2010, entailed the construction of new express rail (shinkansen) lines (in Hokuriku and Kyushu), express highways, airports, information systems, six major bridges linking the main islands, large dams and nuclear installations, and last but far from least, a new capital city, together with, at the local level, countless culture centers, athletic grounds, galleries, and public concert halls. In 2002 I wrote that Japan’s public works sector had grown to be: “three times that of Britain, the US or Germany, employing seven million people (one in ten of the work-force), spending each year between 40 and 50 trillion yen, about 8 per cent of GDP or two to three times that of other industrial countries. The benefits were widespread, especially as public works fulfilled a “welfare” function in soaking up unemployment such as that created by the long recession of the 1990s. Gradually, however, the collusive structures at the core of the system corrupted both politics and society, and Japan came to have more dams and more roads per unit of land than the continental US, half its coastline and most of its rivers concreted, 90 per cent of tidal wetlands drained and lost, its ground-water drastically depleted, its bio-diversity threatened.” 3 2

3

Kakuei Tanaka, Building a New Japan: Remodelling the Japanese Arhchipelago, The Simul Press, 1972. “The end of Japan’s construction state,” New Left Review, 13, January-February 2002, pp. 1–19.

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The fifteen subsequent years basically continued these trends. The “Reform Desiderata” process, nominally two-way, in effect constituted a set of US instructions, setting out general neo-liberal principles and prescribing particular applications on matters to do with the budget, tax system, joint stockholding rules, down to the request that Japanese stop working on Saturdays.4 One senior Japanese official referred to such egregious demands as tantamount to a “second [US] occupation.”5 During the years spanning the change of millennia, social movements against pollution and for environmental conservation subjected the doken kokka to harsh critique, paying particular attention to the system’s “hundred worst” public works projects.6 Under pressure, the LDP government undertook a review but it resulted in the cancellation of just 0.5 per cent of 8,000 projects investigated, including not one of the “100 worst.”7 When LDP rule in August 2009 gave way to the Democratic Party government headed by Hatoyama Yukio, the critique of the public works-centered policies of the preceding decades gathered momentum. Some of the more egregious of the projects inherited from the LDP were shelved as the DPJ spoke of shifting the priority “from concrete to people.” But in retrospect DPJ rule turned out to be but an interlude. It lasted three years and a few months, saw three Prime Ministers, a gridlocked administration and a Prime Minister who surrendered to US pressure after being betrayed by his own officials. It was the DPJ’s misfortune to be in office in 2011 when the triple catastrophe of Fukushima’s quake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown struck. The DPJ government was as much a failure in terms of basic economic and environmental policy as it turned out to be in defense policy when Hatoyama abandoned his pledge to stop any “within Okinawa” substitute for the Futenma Marine Air Station. Many projects the DPJ government adopted under the rubric of “Fukushima recovery” were in due course exposed as public works boondoggles unlikely to benefit victims or advance real recovery.8 4

5

6 7 8

For these documents, see the Wikipedia entry for “Nenji kaikaku yobosho,” (accessed 17 February 2017). Client State: Japan in the American Embrace, (New York and London: Verso, 2006, chapter 3), 21 seiki kankyo iinkai, Kyodai kokyo jigyo, Iwanami bukkuretto, No 476, May 1998. See my “The end of Japan’s construction state,” op. cit. Mizuho Aoki and Reiji Yoshida, “Misuse of disaster 'reconstruction' money runs rampant,”Japan Times, 26 October 2012.

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When the LDP resumed the government in 2012, one of its key slogans was “making the country resilient” (kokudo kyojinka).9 It was an evocative, over-arching, almost irresistibly attractive term, reminiscent (as no doubt intended) of Tanaka Kakuei’s “remodelling” the archipelago 40 years earlier. A “Basic Law for National Resilience” was formally adopted in 2013.10 If any country needs resilience, it is surely Japan, where, following the Fukushima and Kumamoto disasters of 2011 and 2016, with 70 per cent probability experts predict a Nankai Trough11 quake of an 8 or 9 level magnitude to occur within the next 30 years.12 If such a “Great Western Japan” quake/tsunami event reached roughly level 8 intensity (that of Fukushima), it might cause hundreds of thousands of deaths along Japan’s densely-populated Pacific belt and economic harm of perhaps 120 trillion yen (42 per cent of GDP), compared to 17 trillion (3 per cent of GDP) in the Fukushima Quake.13 Beyond even the grim prospect of such an 8 or 9 magnitude quake, one expert notes that massive “caldera” eruptions, not known in recorded history but of a kind that spread lava across much of the Japanese islands around 9,000 years ago, are bound to occur “every few thousand years.” When and if they do, they have the potential to cause cataclysmic, civilizational collapse.14 And, if that were not enough to warrant priority to resilience, seismologists reckon that Mt. Fuji, dormant since 1707, could blow at any time.15 Resilience, however, is not sustainability. Like the doken kokka, Abe’s “resilient” state is oriented to growth, not sustainability. Despite the 9

10

11

12

13

14 15

Inspired at least in part by Fujii Satoshi’s Rekkyo kyojinka-ron, Bunshun shinsho, 2013. “Basic Act for National Resilience Contributing to Preventing and Mitigating Disasters for Resilience in the Lives of the Citizenry,” provisional English translation at http://www.cas.go.jp/jp/seisaku/kokudo_kyoujinka/pdf/khou1–2.pdf/ The 900 kilometer subduction zone off the Pacific coast between Shizuoka prefecture and Shikoku. Tokyo Metropolitan Government, 2013. For short account: Finbarr Flynn and Katsuyo Kumako, “In quake-prone Japan, Kumamoto temblors stir worry of ‘Tokyo X-day’,” Japan Times, 29 April 2016. Kamata Hiroki, “Nishi Nihon daishinsai ni sonaeyo,” Bungei shunju, June 2016, pp. 184–192. It seems that the greatest such event, of such scale as to have changed the course of evolution, occurred around 74,000 years ago on the island of Sumatra. Shimamura Hideki, “Kazan to Nihonjin,” Sekai, December 2014, pp. 49–56 Shimamura, ibid.

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vulnerability of the quake-prone archipelago, in which no site can be assured of impregnability, the Abe-led LDP clings to the nuclear path, refusing to concede that Japan’s highly unstable islands are the world’s most dangerous place for a nuclear complex.16 Three years after Prime Minister Abe assured the International Olympic Committee that matters at Fukushima were “under control,” thereby helping persuade it to grant the 2020 summer games to Tokyo, cancer rates in the vicinity continue to rise,17 the “ice-wall” to block radioactive waters reaching the sea had failed,18 the whereabouts of the melted cores of three of the reactors remained undetermined and radioactivity was continuing to leech into air, soil, and sea. The 7.3 level quake at Kumamoto in April 2016, the first in modern times to occur on the Median Tectonic Line that bisects the country from Kanto to Kyushu, did nothing to shake the government’s nuclear faith. If the word “resilience” means anything it must surely mean sustainability of the earth and the shifting of policy priority from national military and economic growth priorities to planetary and civilizational survival. When the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change was adopted in 1997, 400 ppm concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere (from a pre-industrial level of 280) was thought to signal probably uncontrollable warming, melt of the polar icecaps and glaciers, sea rise, storms, drought, flood, coral collapse and species loss. Yet in 2015 that mark was passed. It was the highest in hundreds of thousands (and likely many millions of ) years.19 By April 2017, the global figure was at 407.8, rising 16

17

18

19

Ishibashi Katsuhiko, “NRA’s approval of Sendai nuclear plant ignores Nankai quake risk,” Japan Times, 1 May 2015 (and many other works by this eminent earthquake specialist). Yagasaki estimates Fukushima radioactive emissions to have been two to four times higher than Chernobyl and draws attention to the rising levels of thyroid cancer (Yagasaki Katsuma, “Internal exposure concealed: the true state of the Fukushima nuclear plant accident,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, May 2016), while Hirose notes that the 116 cases of confirmed thyroid cancer in the Fukushima vicinity, together with 50 more suspected cases, point to a rate several tens of times the national average (Hirose Takashi, “5 nen-go no shinjtsu,” Shukan kinyobi, 11 March 2016, pp. 12–13, and “Chuo kozosen ga ugokidashita,” Days Japan, Vol. 13, No 6, June 3016, pp. 10–25.) Kino Ryuichi, “Hatan shita ‘hyodoheki’ ni yoru osensui taisaku,” Shukan Kinyobi, 16 September 2016, pp. 30–31. Andrew Glikson, “Cenozoic mean greenhouse gases and temperature changes with reference to the Anthropocene,” Global Change Biology (2016), doi: 10.1111/ gcb.13342, passim. (My thanks to the author for this text.)

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steadily. The rate of growth, rising from 0.94 ppm in 1959 to 3.05 ppm in 2015 constitutes a spike in the history of the atmosphere “exceeding any in the geologic record,” and appears to be leading the world inexorably towards the 450 ppm zone that scientists now generally believe heralds “catastrophe.”20 Even a stabilizing of CO2 levels within the 400–450 ppm range would be “likely to lead in the long-term to a 9 meters sea level rise.”21 The business as usual perspective to which most governments cling is on track to bring about a 6 degree Celsius increase on the Asian landmass by the end of the century,”22 with consequences that are almost unimaginable. The climatic extremes now being experienced around the world suggest the process referred to as the Anthropocene era may indeed be underway, and that the planet may be undergoing a “Sixth Great Extinction” comparable to the 5th which occurred 65 million years ago and wiped out many species, including dinosaurs.23 In the frame of civilization and sustainability Japan ranks poorly, number 60 on the Climate Change Performance Index as of 2016, the worst performer among industrial countries.24 The “Climate Change Performance Index” tracking the emissions and actions of governments since 2009 estimated in 2015 that even if all plans were implemented the global temperature would still increase by 2.7 degrees over the pre-industrial level, far in excess of the generally agreed “safe” 1.5 degrees target adopted at the COP21 Paris confer20

21 22

23

24

Ibid, see also Andrew Glikson, “Current emissions could already warm world to dangerous levels: study,” The Conversation, 27 September 2016, and Carolyn W. Snyder, “Evolution of global temperature over the past two million years,” Nature, 26 September 2016. Glikson, “Cenozoic,” p. 11. “Unabated climate change would reverse the hard-earned development gains in Asia – New Report,” Manila, Asian Development Bank, 7 July 2017. http://www. adb.org/ If such a classification is in due course adopted, the Anthropocene epoch would follow the Holocene, the 12,000 years of stable climate since the last ice age during which all human civilization developed. It would begin around 1950, and would be defined by “the radioactive elements dispersed across the planet by nuclear bomb tests,” together with an array of other signals, “including plastic pollution, soot from power stations, and even the bones left by the global proliferation of the domestic chicken.” (Damian Carrington, “The Anthropocene epoch: scientists declare dawn of human-influenced age,” The Guardian, 29 August 2016.) See also Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, 2014. COP22 Marrakesh, Climate Change Performance Index, 2016. Marrakesh 2016.

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ence.25 To accomplish the Paris target not only would the carbon emission reduction targets pledged there have to be met and significantly bettered, but a separate massive program of carbon extraction from the world’s atmosphere, by technologies as yet largely undeveloped and at a cost that is bound to be very substantial, is also necessary. 26 Remarkably, the Japan that today works to restore its nuclear grid and export its nuclear technology to the world sees no contradiction between that and its declared commitment to resilience. The Abe government is intent upon filling in much of one of its richest, most bio-diverse regions, Oura Bay in Okinawa, for construction of a massive multi-function military installation for the US Marine Corps (on which see chapter three). In April 2017, Okinawan Governor Onaga Takeshi addressed a crisis appeal to the world community, through the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, referring to the reclamation as “unforgivable and outrageous” and saying “[t]his miraculous ocean, with its rich biodiversity, is on the verge of disappearing from our planet.”27 Globally, ocean warming and acidification have taken a heavy toll of the world’s coral, with severe damage reported from Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, Thailand, Fiji, and elsewhere. Till now, Oura Bay seem to have fared better than elsewhere, but it now faces deliberate human assault at the hands of a government for whom the military ranks above the environment.28 SUSTAINABILITY st

As 21 century humanity faces unprecedented existential challenge, whether in the form of nuclear weapons (war, accident, or terrorism), or nuclear electricity generation gone wrong, (as at Fukushima in March 25 26

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“COP21 will require serious effort,” Japan Times, 6 November 2015. Eeico Rohling, “We need to get rid of carbon in the atmosphere, not just reduce emissions,” The Conversation, 20 April 2017. http://theconversation.com/we-needto-get-rid-of-carbon-in-the-atmosphere-not-just-reduce-emissions-72573/ Quoted in Yoshikawa Hideki, “Seawall construction on Oura Bay, Internationalizing the Okinawa struggle,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 1 June 2017. http:// apjjf.org/2017/11/Yoshikawa.html/ However, the combination of prolonged high (above 30 degrees) ocean temperatures during the summer of 2016 with rising acidification (the coast of Japan “already 30 per cent more acidic than before the Industrial Revolution”) threatens Oura as well as other Japanese sites independently of military construction plans. (Jason HallSpencer, “Ocean acidification and underwater volcanoes in Japan,” Daiwa AngloJapanese Foundation, seminar, Daiwa House, London, 24 May 2016.)

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2011), or from the more diffuse processes of climate change, species loss, global warming, glacier melting and ocean acidification, sustainability becomes a crucial parameter. Yet GDP expansion remains the goal of policy. As of early 2018, the second Abe government is already into its 6th year. When he assumed office in December 2012, he promised to rescue the economy from the doldrums that had stalked it since the bursting of the asset bubble in 1991. Calling his agenda “Abenomics,” he would kickstart the economy by “three arrows”: quantitative and qualitative monetary easing (with an inflation target of two per cent, stimulus spending (pump-priming), and a long-term economic reform and growth strategy. Casting himself as the swashbuckling “archer” of reform, he set about flooding the country with yen (multiplying the monetary base by almost four times to 402 trillion yen between 2012 and 2016).29 Year after year, he failed to meet his growth targets30 though still delivering modest GDP growth (averaging 1.8 per cent), though weakening in 2016 and 2017. Driving the exchange rate down, he boosted exports and helped ratchet up the stock exchange, doubling it and generating a momentum suggesting that trebling might be in the offing, from 8,600 in December 2012 to roughly 21,600 in April 2018.31 Sceptics suggest that the growth accomplished under Abe is confined to stocks, without solid basis in the real economy, and that it is thanks to contrivance and manipulation, notably by the pouring of public pension funds into the market.32 Japanese capitalism is thus not strictly speaking governed by the “market” but subject to “distortion” and “money game” manipulation. Subtract government intervention, according to Terashima Jitsuro, and the Nikkei index would fall to 12,000.33 If that figure, or something like it, is accepted, it would mean 29

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Terashima Jitsuro, “Noryoku no ressun (175), Tokubetshen, 2016 nen Bei daitoryo senkyo no shinso kadai – minshushgi wa shihonshugi o seiyaku dekiru ka,” Sekai, November 2016, pp. 33–39, at p. 39. Actual and growth targets for 2013 to 2016: 2.0 (2.5), -0.9 (2.5), 0.9 (1.5), 0.7 (1.2) (Takahashi Nobuaki, “Eien no ‘michinakaba’ ni shizumu Abe shusho no shin-i,” Shukan kinyobi, 20 January 2017, pp. 14–16.) The Nikkei index, from a peak of 38,957 in December 1989, was at 8,600 on the eve of Abe’s assumption of office late in 2012. It rose to 20,000 in the early summer of 2015 and as of 2018 was hovering around that same figure. 39 trillion yen by March 2016, according to Terashima, “Noryoku no ressun” (175), p. 39. Terashima, “Noryoku no ressun,” (175), p. 39.

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that the Japanese exchange is grossly inflated by government intervention and that a goodly proportion of Japanese pension funds are at risk in a high stakes money game, with the government and Bank of Japan acting as croupier. In September 2015, after three years of Abenomics, Abe unveiled a “Mark 2” version, with three new targets (strictly speaking aspirational goals rather than “targets”): a strong economy that generates hope among people (with GDP growing at about 3 per cent per year to 600 trillion yen, or by about 20 per cent, by 2021), “child-rearing support measures to allow people to pursue their dreams (pushing the fertility rate per woman to 1.8, from its current 1.4 and stopping the population falling below one hundred million), and “a social security system that leads to a sense of well-being.” In May 2016, the Abe government set up a “National Conference for Activating [Japan’s] One Hundred Million People” under a “National Plan” and a Government Minister. Yet change at this fundamental social level was not likely to be achieved in accordance with any national government plan as if it were an increase in production of steel or autos. Young women (and men) showed no immediate eagerness to set about raising the birth rate, nor did workers in the welfare sector seem likely to stop their flow away from notoriously poorly paid carer jobs in order to achieve the prescribed goal of “zero departure.” In short, basic trends were unlikely to be reversed without substantial increase in the rewards attached to motherhood or carer status, and unless there was significant recovery in the economy at large. Population decline confronts 21st century Japan as a chronic problem. From its peak of 128 million in 2008 Japan already by May 2017 had “lost” 1.4 million people, equal to a medium-sized city, and the attrition was expected to continue, falling to 100 million by mid-century and possibly halving again by 2100. Furthermore, Japan’s proportion of aged would grow steadily. Already Japan has over ten million people aged over 80, 70,000 over 100, 34 million (27 per cent of the population) over 65. By 2050 those figures are projected to reach 16 million, 530,000, and 38 million (38 per cent). Terashima Jitsuro, who has paid especial attention to this phenomenon, points out that the over-60 sector of the population holds 58 per cent of the national wealth and 72 per cent of stocks.34 He writes of a “silver democracy” or 34

Terashima, “Noryoku no ressun” (175), p. 39

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“government of the aged, by the aged, for the aged.”35 A society that has half a million centenarians will certainly be something new in world history. Slogans about energizing and revitalizing the country have a certain plaintive ring in the light of this march into advanced geriatric condition. The shrinking, aging phenomenon accompanies steady growth of the national debt, to stratospheric levels. In 2013, the public debt figure passed the one quadrillion yen mark (one plus 15 zeros),36 and Abe has continued to add steadily to it. By 2017 the public debt level was about two and a half times the country’s GDP, by far the highest of any OECD country.37 One droll commentator calculated that, if it were represented by a pile of 10,000 yen (about $75) banknotes, it would soar at least 112,000 kilometers (70,000 miles) into the sky.38 Historically, such indebtedness has been resolved only by war, hyper-inflation, or massive currency devaluation. The analogy in modern Japanese history with wartime Japan on the brink of defeat and collapse is sobering. While Abe aspires to lead a dynamic global superpower and US ally, his constituency is made up increasingly of the elderly and the old. It is they who own stocks and benefit from the peculiar boom Abenomics has fed. Large sections of the population enjoy no such benefit, not least the newly emergent class known as the “precariat” which slowly assumes the centrality once enjoyed by the middle class. Disposable household income shrinks,39 the indirect (consumption) tax is raised (initiated at 3 per cent in 1989 and supposed to be raised to 10 per cent from 2015 but the change held in abeyance), and regular jobs are replaced by part-time, temporary, or non-regular ones (accounting for 20 million people or 38 per cent of the labor force, earning an estimated 1.45 million yen ($12,000) for 1880 hours worked.40 Salaries reduce 35

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Terashima Jitsuro, “Noryoku no ressun (184), tokubetsu-hen, ‘Shiruba demokurashi saiko’,” Sekai, August 2017, pp. 28–34, at p. 28. (Also Shiruba demokurashi, Tokyo, Iwanami, 2017.) John Schwartz, “Japan’s debt looks like this: 1,000,000,000,000,000,” New York Times, 11 August 2013. As of 16 September 2017 the figure was 1,011,970,763,164,167 yen (National Debt Clock, http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/japan) “Japan’s government debt to GDP, 1980–2017,” Trading Economics, https:// tradingeconomics.com/japan/govt-debt-to-GDP/ Schwartz, op. cit. Terashima, “Noryoku no ressun,” (157), p. 202. Kawazoe Makoto, “Seidoteki sabetsu to shite no keizai kakusa,” Sekai, March 2015, pp. 94–100, at p. 95.

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and the once model health and welfare systems deteriorate. 1.6 million house-holds subsist on welfare.41 While the nominal unemployment rate remains low (3.4 per cent) the ranks of the full-time employed who are paid the paltry rate of less than two million yen (roughly $16,000) per year have risen to 1.2 million (24 per cent as against 17.5 per cent in 1999) Abe’s promise to make Japan “the easiest country in the world for enterprises to do business,”42 could only mean further pressure on unions and penalty rates and preference for short-term and part-time labor over “regular” full-time employment. In such a world, virtually anyone in the middle class is at risk of falling into poverty.”43 THE NUCLEAR STATE

On the matter of nuclear weapons, from the fact of Japan being history’s first and second victim of nuclear attack, one might expect to find acute sensitivity and an especially prominent Japanese role in seeking to eliminate them. The record, however, suggests otherwise. Till at least the early 1970s Japan hosted, whether or not voluntarily, the nuclear weapons of the US and served as “a major US logistics center for nuclear warfare in Asia.”44 To this day it clings to the US nuclear weaponsbased security system under the principle of “extended deterrence” (the “umbrella”). When a resolution on “no first use” of nuclear weapons was brought forward in the UN by an 8-country “New Agenda Coalition” in 1998, Japan abstained. In 2003 it pleaded with the United States not to rule out possible pre-emptive strike against North Korea.45 In 2008–2009, while joining with Australia to co-sponsor an International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament” (ICNND), covertly it urged Washington to maintain its nuclear arsenal, insisting that it be: “Credible, Flexible, Responsive, Discriminate (including low-yield options), Stealthy (including submarine-based, Visible (including occasional deploy41 42 43

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Nakata, op. cit. In his 2013 policy speech “Shoshin hyomei” to the Diet. 15 October 2013. Hiroko Nakata, “Under ‘Abenomics’ rich thrive but middle class on precipice,” Japan Times, 7 April 2015. Hans Kristensen, “Japan under the US nuclear umbrella,” Nautilus Institute, 21 July 1999, http://www.nautlus.org/supporting-documents/japan-under-the-usnuclear-umbrella/ Yomiuri shinbun, 22 August 2003.

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ment of nuclear-capable B-2s/B-52s to Guam), and Sufficient (to persuade potential adversaries).”46

It brought pressure to bear to ensure that the US Nuclear Posture Review (2010) not include a statement that the “sole purpose” of US nuclear weapons was to deter nuclear attack,47 i.e. it wanted at all costs to maintain the threat of nuclear “first strike” against North Korea. Following the 2014 Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, a “Humanitarian Pledge” outlawing use of nuclear weapons was by August 2015 endorsed by 159 countries.48 Japan (and Australia) stood apart, calling instead for a “progressive approach” that would be acceptable to the nuclear powers, i.e. to the United States.49 In May 2016, when US president Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Abe stood together at Hiroshima to declare their commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons, neither made any reference to the obligations of the US and other nuclear powers to reduce and eliminate their nuclear weapons under the Non-Proliferation Treaty or to the US government’s commitment to a 30 year, one trillion dollar program to “modernize” and “improve” its nuclear arsenal.50 On 7 July 2017, the United Nations General Assembly adopted by 122 votes to 1 a “Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons,” under which the development, testing, manufacture, possession, movement, use or threat of use of such weapons was henceforth forbidden. Under heavy pressure from the US, Japan joined the nuclear weapon powers in preserving an aloof disregard, i.e. neither abstaining nor rejecting it.51 46

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Quoting a Japanese submission to the US Congress’s Strategic Posture Commission, 2008–9. (Hans M. Kristensen, “Nihon no kaku no himitsu,” Sekai, December 2009, pp. 177–183, at p. 180. For the English text of this Federation of American Scientists article, see https://fas.org/programs/ssp/nukes/publications1/Sekai2009.pdf/) Congressional Research Service, Japan-US Relations: Issues for Congress, February 2017, p. 25 Kawasaki Akira, “Kaku gunshuku o hipparu Nihon,” [Japan pulling against nuclear disarmament] Shukan Kinyobi, 28 August 2015: pp. 20–21. For the “Pledge”: http://www.icanw.org/pledge/ “UN Nuclear Disarmament Talks,” editorial, Japan Times, 23 May 2016. William J. Broad and David E. Sanger, “Race for latest class of nuclear arms threatens to revive cold war,” New York Times, 16 April 2016. On the US pressure, at the First Committee vote stage in October 2016: “Domeikoku ni hantai motomeru bunsho,” Asahi shimbun, 27 October 2016, and on the actual vote, “Kaku kinshi e no ippo, jikkosei ni kadai,” Asahi shimbun, 29 October 2016.

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In other words, despite its public stance of opposition to nuclear weapons, Japan cooperates with the US in deployment and readiness to use them. Strictly speaking, “positive pacifist” Japan is both a “war state” and (by collusion) a “nuclear weapons state.” Once the 2017 treaty is ratified as the planned special session of the UN in May 2018, for Japan to continue with its nuclear weapons-based defense and alliance policy will be in breach of international law. Japan’s commitment to nuclear power generation dates to the Eisenhower “Atoms for Peace” 1950s. Gradually it overcame its so-called “nuclear allergy,” the horror of what happened in 1945, and steadily built up the nuclear proportion of the national energy grid, from 3 percent of total power in 1973 at the time of the first oil crisis to around 29 percent at the time of Fukushima. By then, the official national goal, declared by METI in 2006, was that of Japan as “nuclear state” (genshiryoku rikkoku).52 I wrote of the national policy design during the pre-Fukushima decades to have Japan become a “plutonium superpower.”53 Till the Fukushima disaster struck, Japan’s bureaucrats saw nuclear power generation as the way to cut carbon emissions. By the end of the 21st century they would cut those emissions by 90 per cent by doubling the nuclear component of the grid (to 60 per cent), in effect exchanging carbon for plutonium. The nuclear faith was almost absolute. Having constructed a chain of over 50 reactors on one of the most unstable and quake prone archipelagos on the earth, Japan in 2011 paid a heavy price. The shock of the multiple (earthquake/tsunami/ nuclear meltdown) disaster saw plans for the country’s nuclear future shelved and for a time all nuclear plants were shut down. But as conventional fossil fuel sources then had to be substituted for much of its grid, the government in 2013 abandoned its carbon reduction target of 25 per cent on 1990 levels under the Kyoto Protocol (1997). By 2015, the level had increased by 10.8 per cent over 1990.54 Adopting the abnormally high post-Fukushima year of 2013 as base year, Japan committed to a reduction of 26 per cent in emissions by 2030. The country’s political and bureaucratic elite determined that Japan would 52

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See Gavan McCormack, “Hubris Punished: Japan as Nuclear State,” The AsiaPacific Journal – Japan Focus, 18 April 2011. Gavan McCormack, “Japan as plutonium superpower,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 1 December 2007. http://apjjf.org/-Gavan-McCormack/2602/article. html/ World Nuclear Association, Nuclear Power in Japan, op. cit.

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meet its carbon reduction responsibility but this would follow from and depend on resumption of nuclear power generation. To that end, the Abe government struggled to soften and ultimately to defeat the national anti-nuclear sentiment born of Fukushima. It thus presented an ambiguous face to the world – offering “leadership” but insisting on meeting its responsibilities to the global community by heavy dependence on nuclear energy55 and by opening new coal-fired power stations.56 With nuclear generators switched off between 2013 and 2015 fossil fuel emissions again grew, defying international trends.57 When a pro-nuclear LDP government was returned to power from the end of 2012 it scrapped the 25 per cent emissions cut target set by its Democratic Party predecessor and adopted a “4th Basic Energy Plan” (April 2014) that involved both restoration of the nuclear grid (restoring it to constitute 20 to 22 per cent of power generated by 2030) as a “a key base-load power source,”58 and reinforcement of its coal-fired sector. Nuclear plant reinforcement was designed to withstand a direct sub-ground magnitude 6.5 quake. What struck Fukushima, however, was level 8. Any such Fukushima-scale future quake would exert a force 11 times greater than the 2016 Kumamoto quake and likely be beyond the capacity of even the reinforced plants.59 In 2014, attempting to persuade residents of Kumamoto City that the resumption of the city’s two Sendai reactors would not threaten them, Prime Minister Abe issued the ominous pledge that in the event of anything going wrong he would send in the Self Defense Forces to help evacuate the city’s people.60 Both reactors were in due course switched back on in 2015, ending two nuclear-free years. 55

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Ministry of the Environment, “Submission of Japan’s Nationally Determined Contribution” (INDC). COP21, Paris, 2015, https://www.env.go.jp/en/earth/ cc/2030indc.htm/ Kiko Network, “COP22 Marakeshu kaigi no kekka to hyoka,” 21 November 2016. http://www.kikonet.org/ Japan’s emissions level in 2015 was 10.8 per cent above its 1990 level. (World Nuclear Association, “Nuclear power in Japan,” updated July 2017. http://www. world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-g-n/japan/) World Nuclear Association, Nuclear Power in Japan, updated March 2017, http:// world-nuclear.org/country-profiles/countries-g-n/japan-nuclear-power.aspx/ For table of fault lines, reactors, and quake predictions, see Hitose, “Chuo kozosen ga ugokidashita,” pp. 24–25. “Shusho, Sendai genpatsu saikado e no iyoku,” Nihon keizai shimbun, 28 March 2014.

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Japan also plans to construct 48 new coal-fired reactors domestically, of size ranging up to one million KW and with estimated carbon emissions of 7 million tons, and it continues to promote the export of coal-fired plant on generous public finance terms.61 The target Japan adopted for renewables – 22 to 24 per cent by 2030 – was modest by comparison with other countries, notably Germany, which was committed to cut its 1990 base level by 55 per cent, a very much tougher target than the 18 per cent cut (to 22–24 per cent) that Japan had adopted.62 No existing reactor has been designed to withstand a level 9 earthquake (such as hit Fukushima) or its likely accompanying tsunami. Sustainability would call for closure of all existing plant and cancellation of all plans or projects for uranium and/or plutonium accumulation, refinement, and use, and the adoption of a radically different vision of energy production and consumption, beyond carbon and beyond uranium/plutonium. It would mean reversing a half century of core national policies. Such a strategic decision for sustainability would be to turn the disaster of 2011 into the opportunity to confront the key challenge of contemporary civilization. It was a path the Abe government was loath to take. Rokkasho, under construction in the far north of Japan’s main Honshu Island since the late 1980s, was designed to enrich uranium, fabricate MOX plutonium fuel, recycle the wastes of the country’s reactors for re-use, and provide waste storage.63 It became Japan’s, if not the world’s, most expensive civil facility ever, costing $25 billion-plus by 2016.64 For the time being spent fuel waste storage at Rokkasho is only “short-term” and the “long-term” problem, in which “long” term means around 100,000 years, has yet to be addressed.65 If Japan’s 40 or so remaining reactors and the Rokkasho reprocessing plant are in due course brought back on line, the 61

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Asuka Jusen, “Genpatsu nashi no ondanka taisaku koso heiwa to minshushugi to keizai hatten o torimodosu,” Sekai, December 2015, pp. 83–93. At p. 88. Asaoka Mie, “Sekai no ondanka taisaku ni tsugi no suteji,” Sekai, December 2015, pp. 74–82, at p. 81. Jun Hongo, “World right to slam nuke program mismanagement: expert,” Japan Times, 14 April 2011. http://search.japantimes.co.jp/print/nn20110414a6.html/ Stephen Stapczynski and Emi Urabe, “Japan’s $25 billion nuclear recycling quest enters 28th year,” Bloomberg, 5 January 2016. Philip Brasor, “METI seeks to pass nuclear buck with release of nuclear disposal map,” Japan Times, 12 August 2017.

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Rokkasho unit would be converting eight hundred tons of spent fuel per year into about eight tons (1,000 warheads-worth) of pure plutonium to the existing stockpile of 47 tons (of which, however, 36 are held overseas). The pools of spent fuel that are currently stored either at Rokkasho or adjacent to reactors elsewhere (18,000 tons held at reactor sites around the country) are already a threat to the surrounding region, but if once converted to plutonium that threat would become so much more serious. By 2016, the costs of the nuclear path were increasingly clear. Government (METI) estimated that Fukushima was going to cost roughly 21 trillion yen to clean up, dismantle, store radioactive wastes, and compensate victims, roughly twice as much as had been estimated in 2013.66 The government also had to admit major defeat in that same year when it ordered the cancellation of the massive “Monju” fast breeder reactor project (at Tsuruga, in Fukui prefecture, on the Japan Sea coast). Having by then swallowed at least one trillion yen (roughly $9 billion) in public funds over three decades, producing virtually zero electricity, Monju would require an additional $3.2 billion over the coming three decades to dismantle and clean up.67 Despite the horror of Fukushima and the humiliation of Monju, however, and despite the vulnerability of its chain of reactors along the Japan Sea coast within range of North Korean missiles and its concentrations of highly dangerous nuclear materials at places like Rokkasho, the Abe government was pressing ahead with nuclear energy, and not only for domestic energy generation. Japan stood at the forefront of a small group of countries resisting the global anti-nuclear trend. A nuclear cooperation agreement was signed with India in November 2016, despite its status as a nuclear weapon state, and similar arrangements were sought with Turkey, Indonesia, the UAE and other states.68 By contrast, there was a halt in nuclear programs through much of the world, including Germany (2011), Taiwan (2016) and Switzerland (2017). Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive government was to scrap its existing three reactors by 2025 66

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“Hairo – Boeisho 20 ch en e - jurai sotei no 2 bai,” Mainichi shimbun, 27 November 2016. Also: NHK Special, “Hairo e no michi, 2016, chosa hokoku, fukuramu kosuto – dare ga do futan shite iru ka,” NHK, Sogo TV, 6 November 2016. World Nuclear Association, “Nuclear Power in Japan,” op. cit. “Export of nuclear technology,” Japan Times, 14 May 2013 (and subsequent media reports).

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and mothball a fourth completed in 2015.69 Vietnam in 2016 decided to abandon the nuclear path. South Korea’s new president, Moon Jaein, at a June 2017 ceremony to mark the permanent closure of the Kori 1 reactor, declared (without setting a date) intent to “end energy policies centered on nuclear power” which was, he said, “neither safe, economical nor environmentally friendly.”70 Despite these withdrawals, it seemed likely that Japan, China and Russia wood push ahead with nuclear expansion, to the point where there would be “over 100 reactors” in the East Asian region by 2030, China alone accounting for around 80 of them, mostly along the East China Sea facing Japan. 71 The potential for radioactive discharge from eruption of hostilities between states, accident, natural disaster or terrorist attack, threatens not only this crucial region but the world and indeed all life. While international attention focuses on the North Korean nuclear threat and Japan escapes close international scrutiny, the fact is that, to date, the most serious nuclear threat the region has faced has been that emanating from Japan, especially Fukushima. Japan leads the region into a high-risk future. THE EVER FASTER STATE

Other huge infrastructural projects include the Central Linear Shinkansen, New Tomei Expressway,72 the Great Tohoku Seawall.73 The first of these is especially significant. The Central Rinea (Linear) Shinkansen is to be a superconducting, magnetic levitation transport system, offering speeds up to 505 kph and cutting the journey time from Tokyo to Nagoya and Osaka to 40 minutes and one hour respectively, scheduled to open services to Nagoya in 2027 and to Osaka by 2045. Its 69

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Mei-chih Hu and John A. Matthews, “Taiwan’s green shift – prospects and challenges,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, October 2016. Justin McCurry, “New South Korean president viows to end use of nuclear power,” The Guardian, 19 June 2017. Terashima Jitsuro, “Noryoku no ressun,” (147), Tokubetsuhen, “Kyojin na riberaru no tankyu – heisokukan o koete, Hosokawa datsu genpatsu shudanteki jieiken, abenomikusu o ronzu,” Sekai, July 2014: 37–44, at p. A second Tokyo-Nagoya expressway running about 10 kilometers inland from the existing one, costing around 7 trillion yen ($70 billion), partially opened in 2012 and is due for completion in 2020. The seawall is to stretch for 400 kilometers along the coasts of Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima, basically severing sea from land. It will be roughly 10 meters high, 40 meters wide at its base and cost an estimated trillion yen to construct.

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estimated cost, as of 2007, was around nine trillion yen. Most (86 per cent, or 246 of 286 kilometers) of the route to Nagoya is to be below ground, through tunnels under the Japan Alps at a maximum depth of a staggering 1,400 meters (part of it through uranium deposits in Gifu prefecture). For the decade and more of construction, en route towns and villages face the prospect of an endless stream of dump trucks carrying and dumping excavated soil and materials. Once operating, the maglev trains will require an energy input roughly three times that of the existing shinkansen.74 The mass electrical generating capacities of the nuclear grid were well suited to the supply of huge electrical power required by super-conducting hyper-speed transport. A recent study, noting that the Linear Shinkansen would cost between 5.5 and 11.3 times the existing shinkansen for construction, concluded that it was: “deficit-breeding, energy-wasting, environmentally-destructive, and technologically unreliable …. a guaranteed fiasco.”75

with potential in future to bring about a disaster comparable to its nuclear programs Japan’s nuclear recovery plans. With minimum public debate and serious doubt that it could ever be technically, let alone economically, viable, a ceremony to signal launch of the project was held in December 2014,76 and works got under way early in January 2016. Soon afterwards, 738 residents along the route launched a suit to have the project cancelled.77 The judgement in that suit was not expected to issue until some time in 2018. Other suits were also pending. The Governor of Shizuoka, a key prefecture to be traversed, protested in October 2017 that the route had been determined without his prefecture’s consent, he would find it “difficult” to cooperate and was “angry that JR Tokai had not shown sincerity” in its dealings with him.78 Works nevertheless continue and the fait accompli takes shape. 74

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Saito Takao and Kashida Hideki, “Toron-naki kyodai jigyo no muri to mubo,” Sekai, December 2015,, Kawamiya Nobuo and Aoki Hidekazu, “End-Game for Japan’s construction state – The Linear (Maglev) Shinkansen and Abenomics,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 15 June 2017. http://apjjf.org/2017/12/Aoki.html/ Saito and Kashida, op. cit. See also Kashida’s Akumu no cho tokkyu – rinea chuo shinkansen, Junposha, 2014) and “Hotei de towareru rinea shinkansen,” “Hotei de towareru rinea chuo shinkansen,” Sekai, July 2016, pp. 267–272. Kashida, “Hotei de towareru rinea chuo shinkansen,” op. cit. “Chuo shinkansen,” wikipedia, ja.wikipedia.org, and sources cited there.

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Even within the ranks of the LDP government, strong doubts have been expressed. In 2014, Minister for the Environment, Ishihara Nobuteru, in his formal comment to National Lands Minister Ota Akihiro on the draft environmental impact statement said: “It is undeniable that, even if the environmental impact of construction and operation is avoided or mitigated, because of their scale these works will impose considerable environmental burden … most of these works will be through under-ground tunnels crossing many water courses so there is a high probability of underground water bursting into the tunnels, lowered ground-water levels, reduced water flow or drying up of rivers, and therefore of irreversible impacts on riverine ecology…

Current estimates are for power requirement of 270,000 kW. Such an increase in demand is not to be overlooked under current circumstances in which everything is being done to address global warming.”79 Ishihara also referred to the priority that should be given to renewable energy and energy reducing steps and other greenhouse gas reducing measures. He appears to have been ignored. Though a private sector (JR Tokai) project through the planning and initial construction phase, it was transformed in 2016 when the Abe government committed three trillion yen of public funds in low interest credit.80 The reasoning was that it could constitute an alternative link between east and west Japan in the event of other (shinkansen and Tomei expressway) links being cut by a disaster such as a major earthquake. Sceptics doubted the usefulness of an essentially commuter line, deep underground and crossing innumerable fault lines, for conveying large quantities of people or goods in any such emergency. The line itself would more likely be devastated. Its depth alone would create horrendous rescue problems. Early in 2018, Tokyo Public Prosecutors arrested two senior officials of the major general construction firms, Kojima and Taisei, on suspicion of collusion over price-fixing.81 For those who follow the vagaries of Japan’s “construction state,” it was a case of déjà vu. 79

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Ibid, quoting extensively from the Department of the Environment’s 5 June 2014 opinion paper. Izawa Hiroaki, “Rinea e no san cho en zaito yushi wa hensai ni ginmon fu,” Shukan kinyobi, 14 October 2016, p. 12. “Japan maglev project marred by bid-rigging arrests,” Nikkei Asia Review, 3 March 2018.

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WAR AND GAMBLING

By 2017, Abe’s second term government was still clinging to the goal of three per cent GDP growth in order to achieve a 600 trillion yen GDP. But with the cloud of national debt (to which in four and a quarter years he had added 84 trillion yen or around $770 billion)82 darkening, the welfare burden of the aging population growing, and significant routes of expansion by large-scale infrastructural or resource related projects on either the “One Belt One Road” Chinese front or the Russian/Siberian front blocked by reasons of priority to the “alliance,” i.e. for fear of offending President Trump, there was no obvious formula to regain growth momentum. The linear shinkansen and the forthcoming 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games would serve as a temporary stimulus package but each bore a heavy cost (two to three trillion yen each) and beyond 2020 a “post-Olympic recession” threatened. The Abe government resorted to two other stimulus formula, both tried and true: war (i.e. military spending) and gambling. In each year of his government from 2013, Abe Shinzo increased military spending, to 5.16 trillion yen (around $47 billion) in 2017. Despite its peace constitution, Japan is therefore one of the world’s top military spenders, ranked by Stockholm’s SIPRI (in 2016) at No 8 (after US, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, UK) and possibly higher if the military subsidy it pays to the Pentagon (over $7 billion) is added to its own military budget.83 The various subsidies to the Pentagon include not only that under the so-called “sympathy” budget (just under $2 billion per year) but others, direct and indirect, for an overall total according to the Japanese Ministry of Defense in 2016 of 761.2 billion (ca. $6.7 billion).84 82

83

84

“Kiro no Abe seiken, keizai seisaku, itsu made michi nakaba na no ka,” Mainichi shimbun, 10 August 2017. Japan pays the Pentagon aound $106,000 per US soldier, about 5 times more than Germany, South Korea, or the UK. (Ryukyu shimpo, 19 December 2015 “Omoiyari yosan zoka, shiko teishi no byohei ga arawareta”). For breakdown of that subsidy figure, see Satoko Oka Norimatsu and Gavan McCormack, Resistant Islands – Okinawa confronts Japan and the United States, Rowman and Littlefield, 2012, p. 194. Joe Kelly, “Nervous wait for Trump to reveal his regional policies,” The Australian, 6 February 2017, quoting figures given by Defense Minister Inada, “the first … in more than 10 years.” For table of subsidy payments 1978–2015, see “Beigun ni kokumin no zeikin 20 cho en – ‘omoiyari yosan’ kaishi irai,” Akahata, 10 January 2016.

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21st century Japan is a major customer for military material from US arms manufacturers, including Lockheed-Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, Boeing KC-46 Tankers, Northrop-Grumman E2D Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft, General Dynamics Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicles and Boeing/Bell MV-22 Ospreys,85 and for missile and anti-missile systems. Budgetary “big-ticket” items in 2017 incuded 4 more VTOL Osprey aircraft ($72 million each “flyaway cost as of 2015), an additional Aegis destroyer (ca. 90 billion yen) bringing the Japanese fleet to five, 6 more F-35 stealth fighters (at 88 billion yen or $795 million each), plus missiles and anti-missile systems (two “Aegis Ashore” units at ca. 80 billion yen – ca. $725 million – each).86 Improved version Patriot SM3 missile systems were also on the Japanese order book. The establishment of a space surveillance unit in close cooperation with the Pentagon has yet to be priced but a preliminary 4.4 billion yen was set aside in 2017 for detailed planning. The Abe government had also allowed a second early warning US “X-Band” radar system to be installed at a Japanese SDF base in Kyoto, and permitted long-range US surveillance (spy) drones to roam the region’s skies from Japanese bases. Overall, 90 per cent of Japan’s defense acquisitions are made from US companies. While spending generously on building and maintaining military bases for the US, Japan was also building up its own SDF facilities, especially in the Islands fronting China across the East China Sea. In 2014 Abe dropped the self-imposed ban on military exports adopted forty years earlier at the time of the Miki government, and in 2016 he gave notice that he no longer felt bound by that same government’s “one per cent GDP” ceiling on military spending.87 Amid rising concerns and talk of a possible renewed Korean peninsular (and wider) war, major Japanese manufacturers began to look towards “shipmounted radar systems, laser technology, amphibious search and rescue aircraft and quiet-running submarines” as future growth sectors, even as a kind of “fourth arrow.”88 85 86

87

88

Congressional Research Service, ibid., p. 25. “Japan aiming to boost missile defense with Aegis Ashore system – media,” 17 August 2017, RT.com/news/3999904-japan-aegis-ashore/. MoD budget details from Boeisho, “Wagakuni no boei to yoran – Heisei 29 nendo yosan so gaiyo,” 2017, http://www.mod.go.jp/j/yosan/2017/yosan.pdfdetaile budgetary/ Congressional Research Service, “Japan-US Relations: Issues for Congress,” February 2017, p. 1. William Pesek, Welcome to Japan’s zero growth nightmare,” Barrons, 5 January 2017.

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Japan’s weapons manufacturing industry, gradually freed of selfimposed Cold War-era ban on exporting, was gearing up for the lucrative global market. Japan’s strengths were presumed to be in laser guidance systems, robotics, silent submarines, amphibious search-andrescue aircraft, and who knows what other high-tech warfare systems. It had launched its first “Helicopter Destroyer,” the 19,500 ton (27,000 when fully loaded) Izumo in 2013, at a cost estimated at around $1.2 billion, and a second, the 24,000-ton Kaga, in 2017. At 248 meters in length and able to carry “up to 28 aircraft,” the Izumo was Japan’s biggest post-1945 warship and in effect it and the Kaga were “mini aircraft carriers.” Abe also began the construction of new Self-Defense Force bases in the Southwestern Islands facing China. He would reinforce the existing Air SDF units based in Naha and planned an “Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade,” probably around 3,000-strong and modelled on the US Marine Corps, to be set up, constituting a potential attack force, able to fight alongside the US Marines. Priority would continue to attach to the mega-military complex for the Marine Corps at Henoko – “the only feasible solution” as he kept insisting. And he continued to subsidize the Pentagon for construction of facilities for the Marine Corps in Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas and to pay generously to keep US troops in Japan under the general head of “host nation support.” Throughout the negotiations from 2006 on base realignment, the principle of “inter-operability” of the Japanese and US forces was stressed. They were to share training facilities in Japan itself and in Guam and the Marianas. In effect, Japanese forces taking part in US-led-war games around the Pacific would do so uninhibited by constitutional constraints.89 In Guam they can for example practice bombing, something impossible in Japan itself. US and Japanese forces repeatedly exercised together, learning to function as a single unit and honing their readiness for war. Commander of the US Marines in Japan, General Lawrence Nicholson, told a press conference on 8 March 2017 that, in his private view, “We should have integrated military bases on Okinawa as on mainland Japan… we should fly our Ospreys together, sail our ships together and have our soldiers and Marines training together more often to achieve that.”90 89 90

Kan, “Guam: US Defense Deployments,” p. 16 3rd Marine Logistics Unit, Okinawa Information Exchange, 8 March 2017. http://www.3rdmlg.marines.mil/News/Press-Releases/Article/1107501/okinawainformation-exchange/

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He might have added that in future wars the US would expect Japanese forces to fight shoulder-to-shoulder with Americans. “Peace state” Japan’s military has thus grown into a larger military force (248,000-strong) than Germany, Italy, or France, its naval and air forces a major presence in Western Pacific seas and skies. It has supported and provided facilities for US wars from Korea and Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s to Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria more recently. Seven decades after being defeated in war and occupied by US forces, it insists that the US continue to occupy its territory, especially but not only in Okinawa, and thus provides crucial support for the six ongoing US wars around the world, plus special operations (including assassination) in many more countries, unannounced and certainly illegal. As for gambling, nominally forbidden under Article 185 of the Criminal Code, there were exceptions that already fed a substantial pinball slot machine industry, as well as betting on motor boat, cycle, or horse racing. LDP business interests had long called for restrictions to be lifted so as to allow a Macao or Los Vegas-style casino business. Japan already has an estimated five million “problem gamblers,”91 and pachinko revenue is estimated to be about six times greater than that of Macao’s casinos.92 But the prospect of a new industry that might double the number of visitors to Japan (around 20 million in 2016) and double the amount of money they spent (3.5 trillion yen), was irresistible.93 Both Prime Minister Abe and Deputy Prime Minister Aso have long been key figures in the casino promotion lobby. Secure in their dominance of both houses of the Diet, and no doubt aware that Japan is the only OECD country without legalized casino gambling, in December 2016 after a paltry six hours debate – part of which LDP members used to recite Buddhist scriptures so as to fill in time – they forced through the Diet an “Integrated Resort Promotion Law.”94. Two years later the accompanying “Implementation Law” was expected to proceed to a vote in mid-2018. Though avoiding the word in the formal title, there could be no mistake: this was a casino-enabling and casino-establishing law. 91

92

93

94

“‘Osaka ‘kajino banpaku’ tobaku de wa kagayaku miai wa kakunei,” Akahata, 29 Aril 2017. Utsunomiya Kenji, “Kuni o horobosu kajino kaikin,” Shukan kinyobi, 18 October 2013. Over 23 trillion yen ($203 billion) is wagered annually on pachinko, (“Japan’s government has legalised casinos, but they are not popular,” The Economist, 2 February 2017). Torihata Yoichi, “Kajino-ho seiritsu,” Sekai, February 2017, pp. 29–32, at p. 29.

Chapter Seven

The Constitutional State ™

For seven decades the Japanese state has preserved a delicate equilibrium between the pacifism of its constitution and the military alliance (ever deepening) with the greatest and most war-prone power in history, one that claims a status above the law and is at war on multiple fronts. Those who head the Japanese state must juggle emperor centeredness and popular sovereignty, assertions of the unique, pure, beautiful Japan and dedication to US purpose (most conspicuous since the advent of a US government committed explicitly to “America First”). The Liberal Democratic Party had enshrined the notion of revision in its charter ever since the party was founded in 1955 and Abe had long made clear that revision was his greatest ambition. Since he suffered crushing electoral defeat when he made it part of his explicit agenda in 2007, however, he, and subsequent Prime Ministers, played the issue down in successive elections. In 2012, shortly before Abe’s return to the Prime Ministership, the ruling LDP produced a complete revised constitution draft, and the 2016 elections at last delivered him the two-thirds majority dominance in both Houses of the National Diet constitutionally necessary to initiate revision. He is generally agreed to have won that majority on economic policy promises, but he can and almost certainly will exploit it to accomplish his long-desired restructuring of the state. In May 2017, on the 70th anniversary of the constitution coming into effect in 1947, in a Prime Ministerial video message to the National Association for a Constitution for a Beautiful Japan,1 Abe 1

Founded in October 2014, this Nihon Kaigi-connected rightist organization campaigns, prefecture-by-prefecture, to mobilize ten million signatures in support of constitutional revision. As of March 2017, it had reportedly secured 8.8 million. 190

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at last unveiled his timetable and outline plan for revision.2 He was looking forward to “a newly reborn Japan [that] begins to move strongly forward.”3 The momentum he might have expected to carry this constitutional agenda forward was shaken by events following that announcement that led (for reasons discussed below) to a fresh general election in October. A detailed revision program is expected in coming months, but a number of observations may be made. POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY AND SYMBOLIC EMPEROR

As discussed in chapter one, the 1947 problem for the Occupationrun government was to reconcile popular sovereignty with symbolic emperor, and national sovereignty with the denial of one sovereign right, that to possess and use armed force. It began with the words “We, the Japanese people” (“Nihon kokumin…warera”), but the relationship between the democratic “We” and the imperial “I” (chin) was far from clear. The circle of sovereignty was not easily squared between the people who became sovereign and the emperor who became symbol. Hirohito, the then emperor (having held office since 1926), presented the new constitution as if it were his gift to his people, as his grandfather had “bestowed” the Meiji constitution on his people, with his signature attached at its head just like a sovereign. The constitution’s first 8 clauses were devoted to his position and prerogatives, defining his status in the vaguest of terms as essentially “symbolic.” With the formal apparatus and institutions of political democracy established, but popular sovereignty balanced and restrained by the emperor, the system was far from being what Article 97 described as the “fruits of the age-old struggle of man to be free.” Dower uses the term “emperor system democracy” to capture its paradoxical, oxymoronic quality.4

2

3 4

(Narusawa Muneo, “Kempo chosakai to kaiken undo no doko,” Shukan kinyobi, 28 March 2017, p. 40.) “Shusho ‘9-jo ni jieitai meiki’ kaiken 2020 nen shiko mokuhyo ni,” (and in English “Abe sets 2020 as target year to enforce revised constitution,”) Asahi shimbun, 3 May 2017. Words attributed to Abe, ibid. A point developed by John Dower in his &NCSBDJOH
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In the early 21st century, hundreds of members of the National Diet, Abe prominent among them, belong to organizations such as the Association for Shinto Politics or the Association for a Bright Japan, or campaign for a return to the values of the Imperial Rescripts, or for preparation of special textbooks to instill a sense of national pride and to a sense of “correct” history return to a pure, bright, superior Japanese identity of yesteryear.5 In a bizarre twist on today’s Shinto politics, it was Emperor Hirohito himself who advised the Occupation authorities that “the Shinto elements and their fellow travelers would bear watching because they were anti-American.”6 The retention of the imperial system had multiple implications negative for civic democracy. Despite the constitutional provision of equality of the sexes (Article 14) and “essential equality of the sexes” in matters of marriage and family under Article 24 (2), the 1947 Imperial Household Law adopted the contradictory principle of succession by male heirs. It also granted the emperor and his immediate family immunity from the burden of taxation or the right to vote and from the application of the civil and criminal law. That posed the question of whether one who did not enjoy such rights and duties could actually be a Japanese person, and of what, in that case, personhood – obviously something quite different from citizenship – might consist. The question is especially vexed because of the non-constitutional role, as highpriest in the Shinto religion, which the emperor also enjoys (despite Articles 1 and 20, forbidding religious activity on the part of the state). An elaborate and archaic respect language is reserved for reference to the imperial family, whose words become not mere words, kotoba, but okotoba (“utterance”), again as if sovereignty had never been given up. Today’s neo-nationalist movements are plainly at odds with the constitutionalist notion of citizenship. They harken back instead to the pre-war sense of Japanese identity as a chosen people, distinct and united around a semi-divine emperor. As such, like neo-nationalists in Europe and elsewhere, theirs is a “defensive, reactive, and even paranoid nationalism … where children as well as older students are taught to 5

6

For some related thoughts, see my ‘Nationalism and Identity in Post-Cold War Japan’, Pacifica Review, Vol. 12, No. 3, October 2000, pp. 247–263; Introduction’ to second Revised edition, The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence, New York, ME Sharpe, 2001, pp. xi-xxxi; and ‘The Japanese movement to “correct” history’, in Laura Hein and Mark Selden, eds, Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany, and the United States, New York, M.E. Sharpe, 2000, pp. 53–73. Dower, “Tennosei minshushugi,” op.cit.

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venerate and celebrate the uniqueness of their tradition.”7 As its client state identity stabilized and grew, Japan could nevertheless maintain the assumptions of uniqueness and superiority over other Asians, and resist settling the issues arising from pre-war and wartime Japanese aggression. REVISION AGENDAS (I) COLD WAR ERA

The kind of revision the LDP contemplated during the Cold War decades was characterized by resentment of the 1947 Constitution and the desire to restore key elements of the 1889 Meiji one.8 But, with the end of the Cold War, and the enfeebling of the constitutionally conservative socialists and communists (who through the Cold War held more than one-third of Diet seats and were thus able to block any attempted revision), political, bureaucratic and business elites in Japan became restless and called for Japan to set aside the eccentric Article 9 restrictions on statehood and chart a path more appropriate to a great power. Simultaneously, US pressures mounted to set aside the same restrictions, but to a different end, that of a more active, compliant role as subordinate US ally and defense partner. In January 2000 Constitutional Research Councils were set up in both houses of the national diet to debate constitutional reform. Assuming office as Prime Minister in 2001 Koizumi Junichiro broke with 40 years of tradition by avoiding the pledge not to revise. The “Armitage report” of October 2000,9 the Rand Corporation report of June 2001,10 and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage’s blunt advice to Japan in the wake of 11 September to pull its head out of the sand and make sure that the Rising Sun flag be visible in the coming Afghan war, marked a steady increase in this pressure.11 That Japan 7 8

9

10

11

Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, New York, Vintage, 1993, p. xxix. For fuller discussion, Glenn Hook and Gavan McCormack, Japan’s Contested Constitution – documents and analysis, London and New York, Routledge, 2001. Institute for National Strategic Studies, “The United States and Japan: Advancing toward a Mature Partnership,” Washington, National Defense University, 11 October 2000, commonly known as the “Armitage Report.” (http://www.ndu.edu/ ndu/sr_japan.html). Zalmay Khalilzad et al, The United States and Asia: toward a New US Strategy and Force Posture, June, 2001 (http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1315/) Armitage to Japanese ambassador in Washington, Yanai Shunji, on 15 September, and (“head in sand”) to Asahi shimbun on 5 October. (“Nihon no zenmen kanyo o

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should revise its constitution was implicit in the Armitage Report, and explicit in the Rand Report, whose Recommendation 3 read: “Support efforts in Japan to revise its constitution, to expand its horizon beyond territorial defense, and to acquire capabilities for supporting coalition operations.”

The George W. Bush administration (2001–2009) wanted to have Japan nullify Article 9 and become a fully-fledged, Nato-style “partner,” rendering military, political and diplomatic support on a global scale, the “Great Britain” of East Asia.12 The following government of Barack Obama (2009–2017) basically left Japan policy in the hands of the “Japan handlers,” Nye and Armitage prominent among them. Cooperation and reinforcement of the Client State agenda was central. Abe’s historical revisionist agenda thus enjoyed domestic support from those who saw it as a nationalist gesture and American blessings from those to whom it was the mark of maturity as a “client state. By Abe’s time, the early 21st century conservative position on the constitution had shifted. It no longer contested the central planks of the 1947 constitution – symbolic emperor, popular sovereignty, no war, human rights – and set the case even for revision of Article 9 in the frame of the need to possess a national army in order to meet international obligations and better serve the goal of a peaceful world. Armed forces, under a revised Article 9, would exist and play an important role maintaining and promoting peace and helping to eliminate from the earth “human calamities caused by military conflicts, natural disasters, environmental destruction, economic deprivation in particular areas and regional disorder.”13 Various formula were suggested, commonly to retain most of the existing clause but substitute for its last sentence – “land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained” – a sentence setting out unambiguously the right to possess conventional armed forces. In similar vein, then Democratic Party leader, Ozawa Ichiro, proposed that the Self Defense Forces, apart from a few tactical and training units, could simply be placed directly under

12

13

motome, jirai tekkyo mo kitai Bei kokumu fukuchokan,” Asahi shimbun, 6 October, and in Toshiaki Miura, “All or nothing, says US,” Asahi shimbun, 9 October 2001. The “Armitage Report” offered “the special relationship between the United States and Great Britain as a model for the alliance.” From the Yomiuri shimbun’s draft constitution. (Hook and McCormack, Japan’s Contested Constitution, pp. 55–91.)

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the control of the UN, the idea of a standing army being, in his view, as dead as the 20th century.14 The post-Cold War constitutional revision case was also modified to include proposals for recognition of “new rights” such as the environment, privacy, freedom of information, and popular election of Prime Minister. These were no doubt adjudged “easier” targets than Article 9, and tied to the Article 9 revision to blunt its impact. REVISION AGENDAS (II) LDP, 2012

In 2012, the LDP produced a complete draft of a revised constitution. In the guise of modern constitutionalism, it was in effect a unique design to reverse the trend of two centuries towards constraining governments and empowering citizens, instead rolling back democratic constraint of government, enhancing sovereign state powers and shrinking citizen rights. Without essaying a full analysis, its salient proposals may be summarized as follows: Preamble: The 1946 Preamble, with its reference to universal human rights, was to be replaced by a statement of rights appropriate to the Japanese people, with their “long history and unique culture, along with a Tenno who is a symbol of the unity of the people.” The emphasis on cultural uniqueness substituted for universal human rights. Japanese sense of [wa] would be recognized as the ethos of a nation where families and the whole society mutually support each other. The nation would become family, under its pater familias emperor. Article 1 would retain the statement of the Tenno or emperor being “symbol of the state and unity of the people” but expand it by declaring him Japan’s “head of state” (genshu). Articles 4, 6 and 7, which taken together limited his functions to 12 specific acts (who “…shall perform only such acts in matters of state as are provided for in this Constitution”), to be expanded to include substitution of an all-encompassing “and other” (sono ta) for the strictly limiting term “only” (nomi) in the current Article 4, and the emperor empowered to “perform public acts such as ceremonies conducted by the state, local public entities and other public entities.” The revised phrase would provide ready cover for anything the government of the day might wish, inter alia authorizing the considerable tasks by way of Shinto religious high priest performed 14

‘Nihon wa sekai o do koken suru ka’, Ozawa Ichiro interviewed by Hayano Toru, Asahi shimbun, 1 November 2001.

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by the emperor (despite Article 20 (3) forbidding any religious act on the part of any organ of state), and imperial diplomacy, a function which, without constitutional warrant, had been steadily expanded by governments dispatching the emperor on visits to countries judged politically important.15 Article 9, renouncing war “as a sovereign right of the nation” and the use of “force or the threat of force as a means of settling international disputes” to be retained, but renamed “National Security” instead of “Renunciation of War,” retaining the word “pacifism” covering the general sentiments of the first paragraph but deleting the proscription on possession of war capacity and adding a new section under the heading “National Defense Army” (kokubogun) that would exempt the exercise of the right of self-defense, and declaring the possession of a national defense force empowered to protect the country’s peace, independence and safety and to cooperate in preserve international peace, and maintaining a separate military justice system (courts martial). The revised article was an attempt to reconcile the affirmation of pacifism with the possession of and readiness to employ military force, a contradictory formula to combine constitutional principle with actual and projected state practice. Such revision might be taken as admission that the status of the existing Self-Defense Forces was constitutionally problematic for either they were constitutional, in which case their existence did not need separate constitutional warrant, or they were, and long had been, unconstitutional. Articles 12, 13, and 21 (Human Rights, notably Articles 12 and 13 (“basic human rights” and “all of the people shall be respected as individuals”) and Article 21 (freedom of assembly and speech) would be revised so as to make them conditional on the proviso that such rights not be “abused” and only be exercised provided they “not harm the public good or public order.” Article 19 (Freedom of thought and conscience) would be retained, but a second “freedom of information” paragraph added to the effect of forbidding the improper acquisition or use of information pertaining to any individual. Article 20 (proscription on the state and its organs engaging in any religious activity) would be modified by the exception in case of mat15

Norimatsu Satoko and Kihara Satoru, “Political agenda behind the Japanese emperor and empress’ ‘irei’ visit to the Philippines,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 1 March 2016.

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ters “within the scope of customs or social etiquette” (girei mata wa shuzoku). This would appear to mean that state participation in the rituals at Yasukuni Shrine (suspended by Prime Minister Abe following severe US and international protest after his visit in December 2013) would henceforth be beyond constitutional challenge. Article 24 (Marriage/Gender equality): the existing article, providing that marriage should be based only on the mutual consent and equality of sexes, to be expanded by the requirement that families be respected as the “natural and basic unit of society” and the exhortation that family members help each other. This innocent-sounding clause has to be seen in the context of the Abe government’s desire to give policy weight to “family” over “individual,” and to raise the fertility level of Japanese women in order to stabilize population at the 100 million mark and thus to prevent any further “decline.” Although Abe projected the image of Japan as a country in which “Womenomics” are practiced and women “shine,” their position slightly worsened during his government. The 1947 constitutional principle of equality of the sexes remains a distant goal even after 70 years and the Abe government’s efforts to revive and strengthen the traditional family, and family state, did not augur well for future generations of women. It opened the door to the possibility of “stealthy encroachment” by the state in matters of private behavior and choice.16 Article 25 (the entitlement to “minimum standards of wholesome and cultured living”) never an effective basis for individual claims against the state, was to be retained but expanded into a grab-bag of four rights and obligations [italics added]: under Paragraph 1, the 1947 clause to be modified to include the exhortation to state and people to cooperate to achieve “minimum standards,’ under Paragraph 2 a requirement that state and people cooperate so that the people may “enjoy a good environment,” under paragraph 3 the empowerment of the state to come to the aid of citizens who happen to be caught in overseas emergencies, and under paragraph 4 an obligation on the part of the state to “show concern” for victims of crime. 16

Saito Masami, “‘Kazoku’ ni shinobikomu kokka,” Shukan kinyobi, 27 January 2017, pp. 16–20, and other related articles in this special issue, which, inter alia, discusses the setting up of state-run marriage/introduction/advisory bureaus, funded from the public purse or corporate contribution and designed to boost the birth rate and so arrest population decline.

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What to now under Article 25 had been a vague, if unequivocal, citizen right thus would be converted into a set of rights and obligations, the rights mostly accruing to the state and the obligations to citizens. Under the revised clause, citizens would be required to cooperate with the state to achieve formerly unequivocal (if also essentially unenforceable) rights, while the state would gain the unequivocal right to send military forces to intervene in conflicts involving Japanese citizens anywhere in the world. The final clause on “concern” for crime victims was devoid of any substance and essentially a simple statement of state paternalism. Article 37 (A new article) Various new “duties,” including that to respect the national flag and anthem, Hinomaru and Kimigayo, were to be imposed by a new Article 37.17 And, perhaps most astonishing of all, the current Article 97 (the rights spelled in the constitution are the “fruits of the age-old struggle of man to be free”) would be deleted and a new Article 102 inserted requiring all people, and all members of the Diet, ministers, judges and other public officials (but not the emperor) to respect the constitution. Article 98, a new Chapter 9, would allow suspension of constitutional processes and direct cabinet rule in the event of a declaration of emergency occasioned by foreign attack or natural catastrophe. This was designed to restore the emergency provision in the Meiji constitution of 1889, which had opened the way to encroachment on human rights in pre-war and wartime Japan.18 Restoring it, concentrating potentially virtually unlimited power in the hands of government, has long been on the agenda of Liberal Democratic Party revisionists. Article 99, (obliging emperor, government officials, parliamentarians and members of the judiciary to “respect and defend” the constitution) to become a new Article 101, lifting that obligation from emperor and officials and imposing it exclusively on “the people” (kokumin). Article 100 (Revision) The procedures for revision would be drastically simplified by a new Article requiring only a simple majority of both Houses of the Diet for future revision. 17

18

In was only in 1999 that the National Flag and Anthem Law established the status of Hinomaru and Kimigayo as “national” symbols. The constitutional revision being contemplated by the Abe government would require both be treated with respect, ensuring their centrality to state events. Carl Goodman, “The threat to Japanese democracy: The LDP plan for constitutional revision to introduce emergency powers,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 15 May 2017.

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The overall effect of the proposed revision was to blur the distinction between subject and citizen, and between imperial and democratic state, and to widen the gap between Japan, where rights were confined to Japanese citizens and rooted in distinctive Japanese conditions rather than universal principles, and the rest of the world. This was a document drawn up by state officials, with interests of the state uppermost. In the history of constitutionalism, it was hard to think of comparable examples, though the constitutions of Egypt in 2014 and Turkey in 2017 could be seen as sharing the same essentially top-down, priority to duties over rights, character. Those who drafted it seemed unconscious of the irony of imposing multiple obligations, not least that to “respect” it, on those currently making every effort to subvert and rewrite the present constitution. The effect, if this were adopted as an actual revision agenda, would be to undermine all three basic principles of the 1947 constitution: Popular sovereignty – by restoring the emperor to central role, his authority above and beyond constitutional constraint, Human rights – by admitting only those that could be described as “Japanese” and counter-balancing them with multiple new “duties.” Peace – by the adoption of laws under which Japan could be freed to participate in “coalitions of the willing” anywhere on earth, in other words, to go to war again. REVISION AGENDAS (III) ABE, 2014–2017

Abe took office for his second term just months after this 2012 draft, which he therefore inherited, and it embodied principles that he clearly supported and had played a significant role within the party in steering. The puzzle he faced was that of squaring the US goal declared long ago by Edwin Reischauer of creating Japan as its “puppet state” with his own (and that of many others) aspiration to become a “great power.” As prelude to constitutional revision, in 2014 his government formally adopted a “new” interpretation of Article 9, reversing the longestablished understanding that it forbade engagement in collective self-defense missions and in July 2015 it railroaded through the Diet a package of security bills to give effect to that interpretation. From November 2016, the SDF forces engaged on such “Peace Keeping” missions were authorized to engage in “kaketsuke keigo,” which meant coming to the aid of U.N. staff or non-government organization per-

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sonnel under attack. That obviously carried enhanced risk of becoming a combatant. Even irrespective of formal revision, the Abe government showed its determination to achieve incremental advances in its political agenda. Initially at least, the proposal Abe presented in May 2017, with its 2020 deadline, passed over the key elements of his party’s 2012 package or, for that matter, objectives he was known personally to favor. His 2017 proposal was a compromise, comprising essentially just two elements: a fundamental revision of Article 9 and a new clause (or expansion of the existing Article 26 making compulsory schooling, i.e. through junior high school, free) spelling out the right to free higher education. His solution to the Article 9 problem would be to leave intact the two clauses of the existing Article but tack on to them a third, declaring the possession of a kokubogun. At some point he would have to offer a convincing explanation as to how non-possession of armed force would be reconciled with its possession (and use). As for the education proposal, it is true that Japan ranks at the bottom of OECD countries in terms of public investment in higher education,19 but there was no obvious reason why this required constitutional warrant when a simple law to that effect would seem the obvious solution.20 Furthermore, Abe’s own LDP government had in 2012 rescinded a law adopted under the Democratic Party abolishing fees for senior high schooling and continued, even as Abe was advancing his much grander proposal, to denounce it on its web site as nothing but “an unprincipled ploy (baramaki) to win elections.” Abe’s 2017 proposal, reversing the general trend of his government to cut education spending, would call for an allocation of around 2.5 trillion yen in additional public funds for the university sector alone. He made no reference to where he would find such funds, and why such expenditure would not be baramaki. What he proposed had been endorsed by neither party nor government. His behavior outraged some of the most influential power brokers in his own party.21 It was conceivable that he had decided to 19

20 21

The proportion of private funding for higher education as of 2013 was 65 per cent for Japan as against the OECD average of 30 per cent. (Satomi Sugihara, “Kyoiku mushoka ni kaiken hitsuyo? Kimura Sota kyoju ‘horitsu de jubun da,” Asahi shimbun, 14 May 2017. (Partial translation as “Abe’s call for free education in Constitution questioned,” Asahi Shimbun, 12 May 2017.) Sugihara, ibid. “Abe’s bid to revise charter by 2020 irks LDP veterans,” Japan Times, 12 May 2017.

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set aside the more difficult points of the 2012 draft till a more anodyne revision had been adopted, lowering the barrier against further revision, and that only then would he, or his Party, feel emboldened to proceed with their full agenda. EMPEROR VS PRIME MINISTER

Missing from Abe’s 2017 proposal was any reference to the emperor, although it can be taken for granted that, as a stalwart of Shinto politics and Nihon Kaigi, he would want to elevate the emperor to formal “head if state” and reinforce his centrality to state design. One of the paradoxes of the present constitutional arrangement is that Abe, as revisionist, faces an emperor, Akihito, who is commonly seen as a social and political liberal and constitutional conservative. Although Abe maintains a deep attachment to Yasukuni shrine he is blocked from any attempt to restore it to a central role in state commemorations in part by American objections and in part by the objections of the emperor. Ever since 1978, when Class-A war criminals were enshrined, emperors – first Hirohito and from 1989 his son and present emperor Akihito – have abstained from visiting it, despite both being undoubtedly well aware that their political masters strongly desired their cooperation. In principle, of course, the emperor, as mere “symbol,” can only act or speak on advice, so his every utterance can be understood as a sequence of words chosen by the appropriate official. But in fact the emperor is also an individual, and he may on occasion give hints as to his actual feelings or thoughts. The commitment Akihito declared to serve his constitutional role faithfully on his assumption of the office in 1990 is widely assumed to be one such statement of his sentiment (though it was also his obligation under Article 99). His own distinctive voice may be presumed too in the warm terms in which he spoke of his kinship with Korea (especially on the occasion of his birthday in 2001), or when he referred disparagingly to the efforts of nationalists to enforce rituals of flag and anthem on schools and other such institutions (at a 2004 Garden Party). Perhaps the clearest evidence of significant difference of emperor and Prime Minister occurred when Akihito declined (apparently) to address a May 2013 meeting to celebrate the 1952 restoration of sovereignty to Japan. He is said to have pointed out that for Okinawans that is the day on which Okinawa was severed from Japan as a US military colony,

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and it is therefore seen as a day of ignominy.22 When the national government proceeded anyway with the event, he participated, but he had no “okotoba” for it, instead sitting silently through the proceedings. As he and his wife rose to leave, however, shouts of “Long Live the Emperor” suddenly rose from the assemblage, including Abe and other top government figures. The emperor briefly stopped, apparently shocked at the sudden shift in mood and sentiment, and at a scene all too reminiscent of the era of pre-war and wartime emperor worship. While scrupulously avoiding reference to the pre-war and wartime record of his father, Hirohito, and periodically constructing his war-commemoration “okotoba” on the pain of Japan as victim rather than the guilt or responsibility as aggressor, Akihito occasionally referred in positive terms to the lessons he had learned from his father. He strove to inherit his father’s “kimochi” or sentiment as he performed his duties and to implement lessons he had learned from him. He could not bring himself to allude to the fact of his father having been Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese forces that laid waste to much of Asia between 1931 and 1945. Akihito also maintained, and somewhat stepped up, the tempo of secret “briefing” meetings (naiso) with government officials, an extra-constitutional convention that his father, Hirohito had simply carried over after 1947 from the Meiji constitution. The tendency was marked especially during Abe’s second government from 2013.23 On his 81st birthday celebration event in December 2014, Akihito said: “I think I learned much from the words and acts of the Showa emperor [sic.], not to do things because others say to do them but to act on the basis of my own responsibility.”

Akihito’s choice of words was perhaps a sign of his existential pain as emperor, struggling to reconcile the ethical principle that one should be responsible for one’s actions with his constitutional obligation to 22

23

“Kempo to ayumu, Heika ‘Okinawa wa mikaifuku,’ 4.28 shuken shikiten mae, kancho kunaicho ‘iko’ meguri saya ate,” Mainichi Shimbun, 24 December 2016. From twice per year in 2010 and 2011 to 5 or 6 times per year after 2013. (Kihara Satoru, “Showa tenno o hikitsuide kurikaesareru kempo ihan no ‘naiso’,” Ari no hitokoto, 30 August 2016.)

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act only on the advice of others.24 The one thing he is constitutionally forbidden to do is “act on the basis of my own responsbility.” His cooperation is also significant in constructing a collective national memory that glosses over his father’s responsibility. In August 2017, on the 72nd anniversary of Japan’s surrender and the end of the Asia and Pacific Wars, Akihito spoke of his “deep pain,” his “sadness” and his “thoughts for peace,” but his sadness was reserved for the war victims who were Japanese.25 There was nothing in his address to indicate sorrow over the victims of Japan’s war, or recognition that his father had been anything but a peace-loving constitutional ruler driven by forces beyond his control along a tragic path. In 2016, Akihito, then aged 82 and known to have various health problems, created a political furor, and a serious problem for Abe, by hinting at his desire to abdicate. His sentiment was first leaked from the Imperial Household Agency to NHK, the national broadcaster, before being confirmed by broadcast of a pre-recorded address on 8 August 2016 in which he said: “When I consider that my fitness level is gradually declining, I am worried that it may become difficult for me to carry out my duties as the symbol of the state with my whole being as I have done until now.”26

His intent to give up the job was clear. His broadcast message conveyed a respect for the constitution and for his own role as “symbol” (whether they were his “own” sentiments or those of the senior officials of the Imperial Household Agency) in the certain knowledge that the revisions Abe contemplated would call for his office and his role to be changed, and that Abe wanted future emperors to be “head of state” or “sovereign” with responsibilities probably closer to those of pre-war and wartime emperors than “symbols.” He was widely understood to have addressed the country on this occasion not so much as Emperor (Tenno), which could only be done on advice, but as Akihito, the 82-year old individual, but in that case he would himself have been acting in breach of the constitution since 24

25

26

Kunaicho, “Tenno heika o tanjobi ni saishi (Heisei 26 nen)” http://www.kunaicho. go.jp/okotoba/01/kaiken/kaiken-h26e.html/ “Sengo 72 nen, hisen negau heika ‘fukai hansei’ kotoshi mo,” Asahi shimbun, 16 August 2017 “Kunaicho ‘Shocho to shite no otsutome ni tsuite no tenno heika no okotoba’ yori’,” 8 August 2016. (Also national media for 8 August.)

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Article 4 limits his functions to “only such matters as are provided for in this constitution” which are then defined in a detailed list in Article 7 that does not include early retirement. As constitutional scholar Hara Takeshi put it, it was without precedent for the emperor, by the mere hint of his desiring it, to lead government and Diet to adopt a special law. He was acting “above the law.”27 Speculation in late 2016 was rife that Akihito’s wish to retire had been prompted not simply by age and fatigue but also by anger at attempts by the government to manipulate him contrary to his understanding of his role as symbol, and that the feeling might have been mutual in that the Abe government, especially Abe himself, had been upset at being bypassed by the way his decision was published. Very soon after the event, the number two official at the Imperial Household Agency was removed and replaced by a top Police Agency official with reputation for expertise at handling the media.28 Whether that meant that Akihito would be silenced remained to be seen. In due course, just nine months after his expression of desire for it, on 19 May 2017 the government submitted, and on 16 June the Diet adopted, a special Bill on “Imperial Retirement.”29 It was intended to give effect to his wishes, permitting his early retirement as a singular act covering the transition to his son, Naruhito. The bill itself was a de facto revision, and therefore a breach, of the constitution, since it escaped the strict conditions prescribed for revision under Article 96.30 The proposed law would mean that Japan would (or could) in future have two emperors, one “regular” and one “retired.” The bill, referring to the “deep respect and love felt by the people for the emperor” and to the people’s “understanding and sharing his sentiment,” was unprecedented in its prolific adoption of servile and honorific language. It was widely speculated that behind the scenes of these events a “constitutionalist” and “symbol” emperor confronted a radical, absolutist Prime Minister. The truth might be even more complex and, from a constitutional point of view, troubling: that both emperor and 27 28

29

30

Hara Takeshi, “Okimochi to seigi,” Asahi Shimbun, 18 March 2017. “Tenno ga shuken kaifuku no hi ‘Okinawa no shuken wa kaifuku sarete inai’ to igi o tonaete ita, Abe Seiken ni ubawareru Tenno no hatsugen kikai,” Litera, January 2017. http://lite-ra.com/2017/01/post-2820.html/ “Tenno no tai-i nado ni kansuru koshitsu tenpan tokureiho,” (Special Imperial Household Law concerning Resignation of the Emperor and other matters). Kihara Satoru, “‘Kokumin’ o kempo ihan no michizure ni suru ‘Tenno tai-i hoan’,” Ari no hitokoto, 20 May 2017. http://blog.goo.ne.jp/satoru-kihara/

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government were manipulating the constitution, following decades of steady erosion, to suit their respective interests. The nominally sovereign people were confronted with a major constitutional conundrum. UNRESOLVED CONTRADICTIONS

There could be no logical way to integrate the emperor system and popular sovereignty, the peace system (the Constitution) and the security treaty and the Cold War (kempo with Ampo), the human rights supposedly guaranteed by the 1947 constitution with the constraints and duties specified by the proposed 2020 constitution, yet for more than half a century political, bureaucratic, judicial, and media elites have been complicit in resolving the irresolvable, ignoring, stretching and distorting the constitution, only now having the confidence, however initially cautious, to attempt to bring constitutional reality into line with political practice. In the interstices of the constitutional debate may be seen a fundamental difference of orientation between those who call for an identity and role for the nation as a more-or-less conventional “great power” on the one hand, whose soldiers are able to serve state interests on remote battlefields, and those on the other who seek something distinctive, as a new sort of “civilian” power, a bastion of democracy, humanism, and internationalism. It was the drive for great power status in the late nineteenth century that set Japan on the course for imperialism and war. It was the Meiji Constitution of 1889, together with the Imperial Rescript on Education (1891) that consolidated the infrastructure of statist, authoritarian Japan deemed necessary to power that drive to glory. There was then also an alternative vision, of a development that would give priority to human rights and needs over state rights and needs, and make a virtue of ordinariness as a small country.31 The democratic and people-centered vision was expressed in constitutional drafts in the 1880s, drawn up in some cases by ordinary people far removed from the centers of power. Again in the 1920s and 1930s, the statist, militarist drive for greatness was contested, notably in the political area by anti-war, anti-imperialist, democratic figures like Ozaki Yukio and Ishibashi Tanzan. Their efforts ended in failure, but 31

Tanaka Akira, Shokokushugi, Tokyo, Iwanami Shinsho, 1999. (Also see Kunihiro Masao, “Kempo mushi no kiwamaru tokoro,” Gunshuku Mondai Shiryo, May 2000, pp. 18–23).

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the same, democratic, pacifist impulse for an ordinary, modest nation surfaced later in the immediate post-war debates on a new Constitution and helped mold the provisions adopted in 1946. It is this very same issue of national identity and role that is being contested again in the contemporary debates on revision. These recurring contradictions are embedded in the fundamental contradiction of Japan’s military, political, and economic subordination to the United States, a subordination that has become fundamentally contradictory to national sovereignty but is rooted so deeply in national institutions and thinking as to have become almost invisible. Alternative views, however, are occasionally to be heard. Some call for Japan to drop the emperor altogether, delete Articles 1–8 and spin the emperor off as something like a religion, or privatize the institution.32 The historian Irokawa Daikichi has suggested revision so that Article 1 would simply declare that “the sovereign authority in the Japanese nation resides with the people,” and the emperor and his family would hand over their constitutional functions under the current Articles 1–8 to the Prime Minister and retreat to Kyoto to “live freely as normal citizens with human rights,” cultural figures, no longer “symbol of the state and unity of the people.”33 The sociologist Hashizume Daizaburo raises the possibility of Japan abolishing the emperor system altogether and opting to become a republic. “…the attitude of the people, who are content with things the way they are while depriving the emperor and his family of freedom, is much too selfish and irresponsible. In principle, the democracy that houses the symbolic emperor system is nothing but a pseudo-democracy. The transition to republicanism is the test of the Japanese people’s democracy, and at the same time it will signify true independence for the post-defeat era.”34

Such views of the “symbol” emperor system are, however, rare, and scarcely to be found at all in the mass media. A 2009 survey, on the 20th anniversary of Akihito’s accession, could find only 8 per cent of 32

33

34

Tsujimoto Kiyomi, with Sataka Makoto, “Nihonkoku kempo no gyakushu,” Sekai, October 2000, pp. 44–52, at p. 51. Hook and McCormack, p. 35, and see Irokawa Daikichi, The Age of Hirohito – In Search of Modern Japan, London and New York, The Free Press, 1995, p.145 Hashizume Daizaburo, writing in Sapio, 26 December 2001 to 9 January 2002, quoted in Kihara Satoru, “Naze ‘shocho tennosei’ no haishi o kento shinai no ka,” Ari no hitokoto, 2 May 2017. http://blog.goo.ne.jp/satoru-kihara/.

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people favoring abolition of the emperor system, over 80 per cent being strongly or generally supportive.35 However, another survey, in 2013, found more than half (55 per cent) of the 16 to 29-year old generation “indifferent” (mukanjo) to the emperor as against 17 per cent professing “respect” and 25 per cent a “favorable impression.”36 Still, it is not uncommon to read or hear strongly positive opinions on the emperor from liberal and progressive figures. Thus, writer and film-maker Mori Tatsuya refers to “a deepening of trust” in the emperor:37 “I have a positive feeling about the emperor because he comes across as someone who is trustworthy and a person of character.… I believe the emperor’s authority emerges from the strong regard and trust held by the people.”

Such is this sentiment of “strong regard and trust” that a remarkable 91 per cent of people expressed support and understanding for the wish to retire that the emperor expressed in 2016.38 The sentiment that grows around the imperial institution serves to reinforce the taboo that blocks any discussion of changes in the direction of democratizing it. As of early 2017, as Abe proclaimed his revisionist agenda, two polls found less than half the population agreeing with him that revision was necessary (43 and 28 per cent respectively in polls by NHK and Mainichi Shimbun), and, when the question was narrowed to Article 9 – the imperative to somehow reconcile denial of the right of belligerency and its principle of non-possession of “force” with the possession of significant military force in the form of the SDF and fulsome support for US wars – support fell away even further, to 25 and 28 per cent respectively. The NHK poll also found, for the first time, just over 80 per cent of people agreeing that Article 9 was either “extremely” 35

36

37

38

NHK Hoso bunka kenkyujo, Heisei no tenno kan, 2010, https://www.nhk.or.jp/ bunken/summary/research/report/2010_02/100202.pdf Figures taken from NHK 2013 “Kokumn no ishiki” survey. (“Shocho tenno to seizen tai-i,” interview with Hasebe Yasuo, Sekai, October 2016, pp. 112–118 at p. 117.) Junko Takahashi, “Tatsuya Mori: Emperor speaks to the soul of all Japanese,” Asahi shimbun, 20 December 2013, http://ajw.asahi.com/article/views/opinion/ AJ201312200025/ “Tenno heika seizen tai-i ‘sansei’ 91%,” Asahi Shimbun seron chosa,” Asahi Shimbun, 12 September 2016.

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useful, or “to some extent” useful for Japan’s peace and security.39 Consequently, while the ruling (LDP and Komeito) coalition as of 2018 had the parliamentary numbers necessary to pass a revision, they had a long way to go to secure the necessary popular backing to succeed in the referendum that would have to follow any Diet vote. There could be no doubt that Prime Minister Abe would see the forthcoming launch (in 2019) of a new imperial era as an auspicious symbolic event whose aura he would attempt to associate with the launch of a new constitution. The unasked question of early 21st century Japanese democracy is whether it can be compatible in the long term with an emperor system, of whatever hue.40

39

40

NHK (figures of 1 May 2017) and Mainichi Shimbun, “Mainichi shimbun chosa: ‘20 nen kaiken isogu hitsuyo nai’ 59%,” Mainichi Shimbun. 22 May 2017. Okudaira Yasuhiro and Kimura Sota, Mikan no kenpo, Shio shuppan, 2014.

Chapter Eight

The Rampant State ™

IKKYO – “ONE STRONG”

For five years, and indeed even for the ten years before that, Abe Shinzo has exercised an extraordinary degree of influence over the Japanese state. Already the third longest serving Prime Minister of modern times, the prospect opens of his remaiing office through to late 2021, guiding Japan through the transition of imperial regimes in 2019 and the Olympic Games of 2020. That is not to say that he enjoys strong popular support but his dominance over the state was such that the term “ikkyo” (one strong, implying dictatorship) began to be applied to his government. The electoral reforms of the 1990s had served to entrench the LDP to the point where the support of around 16 to 18 percent of the electorate in the small seat constituencies (as in December 2014) earned it a landslide parliamentary majority,1 whereas the “left” (communist and socialist) vote that had held to about thirty per cent throughout the Cold War collapsed after it to around three per cent.2 It was at least theoretically possible that Abe might manage in September 2018 to extend his party leadership position to three terms (nine years) and so steer the country through the 2020 Olympic Games and beyond to the adoption of new constitution in 2020, before retiring in glory some time before September 2021. 1

2

“Heiwa na shakai, 9 jo ga kaname ni, Nakano Jochidai kyoju,” Okinawa taimusu, 2 May 2015. Nakano Koichi, “Is Japan shifting to the right?” Australia and Japan in the Region, Forum of the Australia-Japan Research Center, Vol. 2, No. 2, March 2014, p. 2. https://crawford.anu.edu.au/distribution/newsletter/ajrc/ajrc06.html/ 209

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MORITOMO GAKUEN

Moritomo Gakuen, an Osaka educational organization headed by branch members of Nihon Kaigi,3 was to have expanded on its existing kindergarten (Tsukamoto Kindergarten) by setting up an elementary school in April 2017 under the name “Abe Shinzo Commemorative Elementary School.” Abe’s wife Akie was designated its honorary principal and the 1890 Imperial Rescript on Education adopted as statement of the school’s educational philosophy. The school’s head was able to negotiate a purchase price for the Finance Ministry-owned land at a sum estimated to have been about 14 per cent of its market value, by some accounts following the gift of one million yen (about $8,800) in the name of the Prime Minister, handed over by his wife. 4 Treated as a sacred document and memorized by school children, the Imperial Rescript had been central to the modern Japanese state’s emperor worship. It called on the Japanese people to be “good and faithful subjects” who: “…offer yourselves courageously to the State; and thus guard and maintain the prosperity of Our Imperial Throne coeval with heaven and earth [and] render illustrious the best traditions of your forefathers.” 5

Kindergarten children of three to five years of age were shown bowing before portraits of members of the imperial family (as in pre-war days), singing the “Kimigayo” anthem and memorizing the Imperial Rescript. Other video records showed children, “lined up, standing at attention, and shouting a nationalist chant that said: ‘Japanese adults should make sure South Korea and China repent over treating Japan as villain,’ and ‘refrain from teaching lies in history textbooks’.”6 3 4

5

6

On Nihon Kaigi, see above, chapter one. According to sworn testimony before the Diet on 23 March 2017 by Kagoike Yasunori, head of Moritomo. The “Moritomo Affair” was subject to large national media discussion before and after this. For brief introduction, see Robin Harding, “Japan’s Shinzo Abe struggles to shake off school scandal,” Financial Times, 23 March 2017. Imperial Rescript on Education, 1890. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Imperial_ Rescript_on_Education/ Tomohiro Osaki, “Abe moves to distance himself from Osaka school after praising principal’s ideology,” Japan Times, 27 February 2017. See also Justin McCurry, “Shinzo Abe and wife under pressure over ties to ultra-nationalist school,” The Guardian, 24 February 2017.

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While visiting and lecturing at the kindergarten on 5 September 2015, the Prime Minister’s wife praised its educational philosophy grounded in the 1890 Imperial Rescript. It was, she said, in keeping with her husband’s views. As the storm over this affair broke in February 2017, references to the Prime Minister and his wife were abruptly deleted from the school’s home page and its name was changed from “Abe Shinzo Commemorative” to “Mizuho no Kuni” (Rice Shoots Land) Elementary School. Abe declared that he would resign from office and from the Diet if he or his wife were shown to have had any involvement in the knock-down sale of the site to Moritomo. Many questions nevertheless remained, including the extraordinarily low purchase price, the matter of the one million yen Prime Ministerial present (seemingly attested by documents tabled in the Diet), the question of whether the Prime Minister’s wife’s enthusiastic association with it could be considered a “private” matter, and, above all, the significance of the adoption by early 21st century Japan of the educational philosophy of the 20th century fascism and militarism. Abe resisted pressure to testify before the Diet, while promoting to head the National Tax Office the official who had supervised the knockdown price sale of the Moritomo kindergarten site.7 Other senior government figures also declared positive views of the Rescript as a statement of educational philosophy, and the matter was even referred to cabinet, which on 31 March 2017 adopted a resolution to the effect that “it was “impossible to deny the usefulness of the Imperial Rescript in the teaching of moral education” although it should not be used exclusively. Both Education Minister Matsuno Hirokazu and Defense Minister Inada Tomomi went out of their way to endorse the Rescript’s moral and educational value, and the Education Vice-Minister Yoshiie Hiroyuki opined that it being recited at morning assembly every day would be “not a problem as long as it does not violate the Fundamental law of Education.”8 Since that 1947 law was revised by the Abe government during its first term (in 2006) in order to add “love of country and homeland” as educational goal, this was tantamount to approval. No member of the Abe government saw 7

8

Daigo Satoshi, “Sagawa kokuzeicho chokan o himen seyo,” Shukan kinyobi, 29 September 2017, pp. 12–13. “Chorei de no kyoiku chokugo no rodoku ‘mondai no nai koi’, bunka fukudaijin,” Asahi shimbun, 7 April 2017, Tomohiro Osaki, “Imperial Rescript on Education making slow, contentious comeback,” Japan Times, 11 April 2017.

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the document as fundamentally at odds with the democratic principles of post-war educational reform. In place of the “distilled water” of those reforms, they appeared to prefer emperor-centered authoritarianism. To the question of how the private school operator had been able to enjoy such extraordinary largesse from the Japanese state, the Ministry of Finance protested that all records of the transaction, save the actual contract, had been destroyed. Opposition parties formally requested a special session of the Diet to probe the matter, but, despite the provision under the Constitution’s Article 53 that a special session had to be called if requested by “a quarter or more of the total members of either House,” when Abe summoned the Diet in September he did so only to dissolve it immediately and call elections. He thus avoided investigation of the various scandals, not least Moritomo, that he and his wife were involved in. The person who might be able to offer light on the circumstances was Moritomo’s former principal, Kagoike Yasunori. Kagoike was, however, silenced by being arrested in late July 2017 (along with his wife) on charges of corruption. Nine months later, as of April 2018, both were still being held.9 In most countries that lay claim to the rule of law, such confinement is forbidden for more than a few days, or a maximum of 20, but Japan’s “substitute detention (daiyo kankoku) system made it possible to hold suspects in police detention indefinately. Yamashiro Hiroji (see above, p. 106–108) was held for 153 days in 2016–7. The Kagoike’s, like Yamashiro denied any human contact save with their lawyers, had by early 2018 been detained for even longer than him. Mr Kagoike, maintaining his right to remain silent before the prosecutors, was confined to a windowless cell, from which he was able to know night from day only by the changes in his captors’ movements. Mrs Kagoike was held in a cell without heating or cooling, despite Osaka’s extreme heat and cold.10 Japan’s prosecutors appeared ready to continue renewing their imprisonment until they recanted their charges against the Prime Minister and Prime Minister’s wife. Ironically, one of the justifications for their prolonged detention was the suspicion that they might tamper with evidence, but that is precisely what the state itself had done by destroying the documentary record. 9

10

Takano Takashi, “‘Mori, Kake giwaku’ o wasuresaseru sakuryaku o yurushite naranai,” Nikkan Gendai, 28 December 2017 Kamei Hiroshi “Sekken kinshi, mado-nashi dokubo, Kagoike fufu no nagasugiru koryo ni moto saibankan no gimonshi,” Asahi shimbun, 6 December 2017.

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Their prolonged incarceration, like that of Yamashiro, appeared to contravene Japan’s constitutional ban (Article 18) on “involuntary servitude” or (under Article 34) on prolonged detention “without adequate cause.” It also appeared to breach Japan’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (notably Articles 9, 14, and 15, requiring release of accused suspects pending trial). According to the Japan Federation of Bar Associations (JBA), “Japan is the only country in the world which allows the detention of suspects in police stations for long time periods.”11 KAKE GAKUEN VETERINARY COLLEGE

The dust over the Moritomo affair had scarcely begun to settle (albeit without resolution) than a fresh scandal arose over an unrelated educational institution. Kake Gakuen is a mammoth private educational foundation in Western Japan, running institutions from pre-school to post-graduate, headed by Kake Kotaro, a close Abe personal friend, frequent golfing companion and family intimate from the time they both studied in the United States forty-odd years ago. At some point in the early 1990s, Abe himself served on the Kake group board.12 Between 2007 and 2014, the Kake group on 15 occasions sought official approval for establishment of a veterinary school in Okayama University of Science in Imabari City, Ehime Prefecture. In 2015, apparently at the suggestion of the Abe government, it reformulated that application to fall within the ambit of a proposed “strategic special economic zone,” under Abe’s “three arrows” design for steppedup economic growth. In 2016, the application suddenly moved forward, despite the statement of opposition in October issuing from the Japan Veterinarian Medical Association which insisted that the project failed to meet any of the established criteria.13 Tokyo nevertheless went ahead and approved the application in November. Suspicions then began to circulate over the possibility that the decision might have been influenced by the close personal friendship of Kake and 11

12

13

Japan Federation of Bar Associations, “Japan’s ‘substitute prison’ shocks the world,” September 2008, https://www.nichibenren.or.jp/library/ja/publication/booklet/ data/daiyou_kangoku_leaflet_en.pdf/ Abe to Judicial Committee of House of Councillors, 30 May 2017. (Mainichi Shimbun, 30 May 2017). Kataoka Nobuyuki, “Imabari-shi to Kake gakuen no keikaku jitsugen wa muri da,” Shukan kinyobi, 2 June 2017, pp. 18–19.

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the Prime Minister. As accusations and counter-accusations swirled around the Veterinary School, it also came to light that Imabari City had provided the land (a 16.8 hectare site of estimated value around Y3,675 million or $33 million) without charge as well as meeting a significant proportion (9.6 billion yen) of the total project cost of 19.2 billion yen (ca. $172 million).14 Documents purporting to date from September-October 2016 and to be from the Ministry of Education, circulated widely early in 2017 and were then published in Asahi Shimbun on 17 May. They pointed to a highly irregular procedure in which the Prime Minister’s “will” and the wishes of “highest level of government” were crucial in determining that the school should go ahead and should open in April 2018.15 A week later, former Education Vice-Minister Maekawa Kihei stepped forward to confirm the genuineness of the documents, at a press conference and subsequent interview with Mainichi Shimbun, and later personal account in the monthly Bungei shunju.16 Days before Maekawa published his bombshell, the Yomiuri Shimbun began to circulate scurrilous rumors against him, alleging that he frequented “dating” establishments where he sometimes paid the bill for young women (with the implication that he was paying for sexual services).17 The Cabinet office was assumed to have “leaked” this information in a bid to silence Maekawa and his inconvenient witness.18 However, it transpired that since his retirement from the Ministry in January 2017, Maekawa had been an active member of an NGO association concerned with research and action to address child poverty. The allegations of impropriety went nowhere.19 Maekawa’s testimony raised many questions. He revealed direct pressure upon him from a senior Abe adviser to hurry up the process. 14

15

16

17

18

19

“Moritomo mondai ni kokuji, Kake giwaku ni mo hyojo shita ‘Nihon kaigi’ no sen,” Nikkan gendai, 7 June 2017. “Outline of negotiations with Cabinet Office secretary,” (Naikakufu shingikan to no uchiawase gaiyo), 26 September 2016, reproduced in Mainichi Shimbun, 2 June 2017. Maekawa Kihei, “Maekawa Kihei zen bunka jimujkan shuki, waga kokuhatsu wa yakunin no kyoji da,” Bungei shunju, July 2017, pp. 94–105 “Jinin no Maekawa, zen bunka jikan, deai-kei ba ni dehairi,” Yomiuri Shimbun, 22 May 2017. “Kantei retteru hari shippai, Maekawa zen jikan ‘ii hitoepisodo zokuoku,” Nikkan gendai, 3 June 2017. “Abe kantei ga shubun sagashi ni yakki, Maekawa zen bunka jikan ‘kuchi fuji tembo’ mo,” Nikkan gendai, 30 May 2017.

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He described the process starting from the initial overtures from the prime minister’s office in late August to the decision in November 2016 as “irregular” or “dodgy” [yugamerareta].” He referred to intervention by Kiso Isao, special adviser to the Prime Minister and a board member of Kake Educational Institution, in late August 2016 to urge acceleration of the procedure: “I think he visited me in the capacity of a special adviser to the Cabinet,” Maekawa said. “Kiso held two positions at that time. A[n] (education) corporation’s role, wanting regulations to be eased, and also a governmental stance. I therefore believe that he had a conflict of interests.”

Maekawa described having been “summoned to the prime minister’s office” about the plans on two occasions in September and October 2016 by Izumi Hiroto, a special adviser to the Prime Minister. As Maekawa states, “As far as I remember, Izumi said to me (in September), ‘[t]he prime minister can’t tell you to do this directly, so I am telling you to do it instead’.” At a subsequent, 17 October, meeting, Izumi followed up by directing Maekawa to “reach an early conclusion.”20 Maekawa added that, “the discussions that should have taken place did not,” adding “[t] he prime minister’s secretary and adviser have become much more influential and important that any of the Cabinet ministers.”21 That sombre assessment from a former Vice-Minister of Education has to be kept in mind when considering the troubling case of a rape allegation against a journalist with close and friendly ties to the Prime Minister. Charges were laid, an arrest warrant issued. It was to have been executed when the accused returned from Washington to Tokyo in June 2015. Instead, as the victim complained at a press conference and in a submission to the Prosecution Review Committee (kensatsu shinsakai), it was set aside “because of an instruction from a higher-ranking police officer.” 22 If so, the victim was suffering 20

21 22

“Gov’t attempts to bury Kake scandal only deepening suspicions, Mainichi Shimbun, editorial, 31 May 2017; “Ex-education vice minister slams gov’t process for fast-tracking Kake project, Mainichi Shimbun, 5 June, 2017; “Suspicions Abe gov’t trying to run out Diet clock on Kake affair,” editorial, Mainichi Shimbun, 6 June, 2017. And, on Kake and the relationship with the Prime Minister, Koizumi Kohei and Kamei Hiroshi,”Sontaku ya boryaku no ura de ‘otomodachi’ yugu, Abe kancho ni su-kuu kake gakuen jinmyaku,” Nikkan gendai, 7 June 2017. “Ex-Education Minister,” op. cit. Reiji Yoshida, “High-profile journalist with close Abe ties accused of rape,” Japan Times, 30 May 2017.

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a double blow to her dignity and human rights, by the act itself and by the high-level complicity in covering it up and depriving her of judicial recourse. Even after the authenticity of the Kake documents in circulation (sufficient to constitute a prima facie case of improper exercise of influence against the Prime Minister) had been confirmed by multiple sources from within the Ministry, the Minister himself announced that a search had failed to turn up any such documents. Abe and his government (including Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide) dismissed the matter as one based just on “peculiar documents” (kaibunsho), vehemently denied any wrongdoing and refused to consider any official investigation.23 At this point, however, following an emergency meeting of Abe’s closest aides, Suga reversed himself, reopening the investigation and “finding” 14 of the 19 “peculiar documents.” Suga continued to claim, however, that they did not demonstrate any direct association of the “Prime Ministerial will” with the decision.24 Further material confirming Maekawa’s account turned up later, indicating that Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Hagiuda Koichi had “conveyed Abe’s will on the school project” to the Ministry of Education, setting the specific (if all but impossible) deadline of April 2018 for it to open.25 If indeed official reluctance to pursue offensive or potentially damaging to the Prime Minister (the rape allegations) was in this way matched by the deliberate leak of information damaging or potentially damaging to critics of the Prime Minister (Maekawa), then the Japanese term “ikkyo” (one strong, meaning dictatorial) was being rightly applied to the Abe government. Such suspicions, combined with disbelief on Moritomo and Kake, accounted for the steady decline in support for the Abe government through the early months of 2017. As Abe’s surprise decision to call an election in October succeeded in diverting public attention from scandal to “crisis” (North Korea’s missiles and nuclear weapons), his support figures recovered somewhat from 29.2 per cent in June to 43.7 by December.26 23

24

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26

“As investigative reports grow, Suga rebuffs demand to reopen Kake probe,” Japan Times, 8 June 2017. “Suga shi ‘kai bunsho’ hatsugen wa tekkai sezu ‘kotoba no hitori aruki zannen’,” Ryukyu shimpo, 15 June 2017. “Close-up Gendai,” NHK TV, 19 June 2017; see “Kake scandal continues to plague Abe administration with discovery of new document,” The Mainichi, 21 June 2017. TV Asahi, “Seron chosa,” http://www.tv-asahi.co.jp/hst/poll/graph_naikaku.html/ (accessed 30 December 2017).

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Some voiced the suspicion that Nihon Kaigi, the ultra-nationalist organization discussed above, might have constituted a hidden thread tying the various parties to it in shared commitment. Kake, Moritomo, Abe, and the mayor of Imabari City, as well as virtually all members of Abe’s cabinet were known to be members or supporters, and an inclination to help fellow believers in a post-conservative Japanese radical rightist cause might reasonably be assumed. Kake’s middle schools were also noted for their adoption of rightist history and civics texts texts, offering a “Japan is beautiful” patriotic education, an orientation to constitutional revision and an end to the postwar regime.27 CONSPIRACY

As the government struggled through 2017 to contain both the Moritomo and Kake affairs, on 23 May and 15 June it rammed through the two Houses of the Diet a bill entitled the “Law concerning conspiracy to commit organized crimes such as terror” (Tero nado junbizai ho). This bill incorporated major provisions of “Conspiracy Law” proposals brought unsuccessfully before the Diet between 2003, 2004, and 2005 and so was commonly known simply as “Conspiracy Law.” The projected law, nominally to criminalize “planning” and “preparatory actions” by “organized criminal groups,” would extend to 277 separate offences (from 600 in the earlier draft proposals).28 It was necessary, according to Prime Minister Abe, to ensure security against any terrorist threat to the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga argued that it was a prerequisite for Japan’s joining the UN Convention on Transnational Organized Crime. Critics complained, however, that the terms of the draft bill were so loosely defined in the legislation as to be potentially applicable to any organizations that disagreed with the government. Thoughts (“planning” or “preparatory actions”) were to become punishable rather than deeds. That seemed incompatible with the guarantees of freedom of thought under Article 19 of the constitution. Though introduced and steered through the Diet as a law which targeted only “organized crime” and therefore would not affect “ordinary 27

28

“Moritomo, Kake, kaiken sengen …, subete no ura ni ‘Nihon Kaigi’ no ijo,” Nikkan Gendai, 9 June 2017. For one discussion, Tomohiro Osaki, “Lawmakers ram conspiracy bill through Lower House as U.N. expert slams Tokyo,” Japan Times, 23 May 2017.

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people,” it nevertheless stirred memories of the infamous 1925 “Peace Preservation Law” (Chian ijiho). Likewise introduced as innocuous, the 1925 law had gradually developed into a merciless net of repression, crushing dissent about the war or the “national polity” (the dictatorship in the name of the emperor).29 The projected legislation attracted significant international attention. The United Nations’ special rapporteur to the Human Rights Commission on the right to privacy, Joseph Cannataci, wrote (18 May) to the Prime Minister expressing concern over the “vague and subjective concepts” it employed and “the risk of undue restrictions to the rights of privacy and to freedom of expression.”30 The word “and so on” (nado) plainly opened the door to extension of the net to include all sorts of offences. In like vein, a representative group of 159 “researchers on the Japanese criminal law” issued a statement condemning the draft law’s vagueness, its inclusion of many matters unrelated to terrorism, and its potential application to any group of people gathered to discuss social and political problems.31 They noted that the government had failed to make the case for such legislation to be necessary. On the very day that the UN Rapporteur’s letter was received the Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga riposted angrily that criticism such as Cannataci voiced was “one-sided” and “obviously inappropriate.”32 Days later, Suga told a press conference that the Rapporteur’s letter was “just a private opinion” and its contents were “inappropriate.” Ignoring the Cannataci admonition to slow down and reconsider, the government pressed ahead, pushing the bill through the Lower House on 22 May. Abe himself used much the same words in addressing the Upper House on 29 May, again dismissing the Cannataci criticisms as a “personal opinion.” When be made this same point directly to the UN Secretary-General on 28 May, the UN issued an unusual “Clarification,” to the effect that Rapporteurs were “appointed by and reported to the Human Rights 29

30

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“Kyobozai shingi ‘Abe shusho no un ga ii,’ Tawara Soichiro,” Asahi shimbun, 11 May 2017. UN Rapporteur on Privacy to Prime Minister of Japan, Letter dated 18 May 2017, http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Privacy/OL_JPN.pdf/ “Kyobozai hoan no teishutsu ni hantai suru keijiho kenkyusha no seimei,” Sekai, April 2017, pp. 50–52. Richard Lloyd Parry, “UN condemns Japanese conspiracy law,” The Times, 24 May 2017.

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Commission, and they were independent experts” who, however, “have a critical role to play in the architecture of the UN system.”33 Cannataci renewed his attempt to engage the Japanese government in discussion, saying: “There is absolutely no justification for the Japanese government to behave in this way and push through seriously defective legislation in such a rush .... This is the time for the government of Japan to sit back for a minute, reflect, realize that it can do things in a better way and then proceed to behave like a world-class democracy.”34

Cannataci plainly foresaw the likelihood of police surveillance jeopardizing the constitutional right to privacy and opening the door to suppression of critical thinking and social movements. Kaoru Yamaguchi of Amnesty International commented, “If this law passes the Diet, then our organization and our supporters will be seriously affected … There is a good chance of us being regarded as ‘organized criminal group’.” 35 Suga blasted the UN official’s statement as “clearly inappropriate.” He cast doubt on the Cannataci investigation into the legislation saying it had been carried out in a “private capacity” and “did not represent the UN.” In an email interview (with the Japan Times), Cannataci riposted that he had given his opinion not as an individual but as an official of the United Nations. Despite the Japanese government’s pledge of “full cooperation” in the work of the Human Rights Commission, on the basis of which it was appointed to a seat on the Council in January 2017, the Abe government appeared to be seeking pretexts to enable it to deny its “full cooperation” when it involved conflict with its own agenda.36 Cannetaci noted that the government of Japan had ignored the criticisms and queries he had made, and dismissed its protests as “angry words.”37 In similar vein, PEN International, the global organization of 33

34 35 36

37

“Clarification – Status of SRP’s communication to the Government of Japan concerning the ‘anti-conspiracy’ bill,” n.d., http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/ Issues/Privacy/OL_JPN.pdf/ Lloyd Parry, ibid. Lloyd Parry, ibid. Okawa Ryutaro, “Kennatacchi kokuren tokubetsu hokokusha no ‘ke nen’,” Shukan kinyobi, 2 June 2017, pp. 12–13. Lloyd Parry, op. cit.

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writers, on 6 June 2017 issued a statement of warning that, if adopted, “the Conspiracy Law will harm freedom of expression and the right to privacy in Japan. We strongly urge the parliament to vote against this legislation, which could deeply harm the basic freedoms of the Japanese people.”38 A separate United Nations Rapporteur (on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression), reported more comprehensively on an April 2016 official visit to Japan.39 David Kaye sought 5 things: amendment to the Special Secrets Law; media independence of government, revision (abolition of Article 4) of the Broadcast Law, an end to government interference in school texts, and guarantee of freedom of anti-government political movements (especially Okinawa). His detailed report and expression of concern helps explain why it is that Japan is ranked at Number 72, just below Fiji, Lesotho, Mongolia, Malawi and Hungary, on the Reporters without Borders table of world press freedom.40 The concern over the projected legislation was especially strong on the part of Okinawans because their experience of the Abe government was that it was already blurring the line between civil protest and terror.41 Even without any specific “conspiracy” legislation, it had (as detailed above) imprisoned Yamashiro Hiroji for five months from October 2016 without trial or conviction. If it was to press ahead with construction of the new Henoko and Takae bases and military facilities in Okinawa against the will of the overwhelming majority of the Okinawan people, then all Okinawans, simply by saying “No,” or writing it on their Facebook, were giving vent to seditious thoughts and so guilty of “conspiracy.” As this imbroglio continued, some began to suggest that Prime Minister Abe was engaged on a historical re-make of the famous 1933 Japanese “Walk-out” from the League of Nations, in protest against the 38

39

40

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Jennifer Clement, president, Pen International, Statement, 5 June 2017, http:// www.japanpen.or.jp/statement/post_596.html/ “Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression on his mission to Japan,” Human Rights Council, Thirty-fifth session, 6–23 June 2017, 29 May 2017. A?HRC/35/22/ Adc.1/. Reporters without Borders, “Ranking Table,” 2017. http://rsf.org/en/ranking_ table/ As noted above then (29 November 2013) LDP party chief Ishiba Shigeru is on record as holding to the view (in his blog) that after all there is little difference between demonstrators and terrorists.

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report by the then “independent expert,” Lord Lytton (Victor BulwerLytton), on the Manchurian crisis, a walkout that led to diplomatic isolation and ultimately national catastrophe. SECRETS

The “Designated Special Secrets Protection Law” was adopted in December 2013. It had been strongly urged upon Japan by the United States, uneasy at the lack of formal guarantees of secrecy despite the ever closer military cooperation under the War on Terror.” It was, however, inherently vague. At its own discretion, the government was empowered by it to designate as “state secret” information concerning defense, diplomacy, counter-intelligence, or security, without being obliged to issue public notice, explain its reasons or set any limit of time to the order. Pen International had once before issued a statement of such concern. Not only could “Special Secrets” in theory be sealed up for ever but governments could also destroy information without ever having revealed its existence.42 Under the 2013 law, the state could criminalize the acquisition or circulation of information on matters designated as secret by the government, punishing those, including journalists or academics, convicted of breach with a prison term of up to five years,. Even for those who accidentally reveal secrets, a term of up to two-years was prescribed. In addition, in order to “protect” those secrets, the government was also empowered: “to conduct background checks into the character, health history, drinking habits, drug use, and financial credit status of public servants (elected Diet members included) handling the information and private citizens to whom such handling is consigned, as well as their relatives, friends, and acquaintances, with information leaks punishable by up to ten years in prison.”43

It amounted to a strong disincentive against serious investigative journalism. In April 2016 the UN’s Rapporteur noted that the Specially Designated Secrets Act, by protecting information from disclosure, was “putting in peril the public’s right to know in areas of immense 42

43

For the Pen International (Japan Branch) statement, “The designated secrets bill our concern,” n.d. (late 2013?), http://www.japanpen.or.jp/en/news/ Pen International, op. cit.

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public interest such as nuclear power, national security and disaster preparedness.”44 However, what was not known at the time the bill was adopted in 2013 was just what fundamentally “secret,” high-level machinations were concentrated in it. For obvious reasons, journalists and researchers have been inhibited from exploring these matters, but one intrepid investigator, less likely than others to be deterred, was Edward Snowden, formerly analyst of the US National Security Agency, in refuge in Russia since exposing masses of secret US intelligence documentation in 2013. Since the initial shock of the release of those documents, Snowden has made a series of further, startling revelations in interviews with Japanese media groups. Snowden spent two years in Japan from 2009, under the guise of employee of a private computer company but actually as a member of the National Security Agency (NSA) directly answerable to the Minister of Defense in Washington and attached to Yokota US Airforce base on Tokyo’s fringe. Nominally a civilian computer expert, he was in effect a spy, charged with stepping up surveillance of the Japanese government and major Japanese institutions, including the Cabinet, government departments, trading companies, oil and gas companies, and Bank of Japan.45 According to Snowden, the US appetite for Japanese information extended to the economic and political as well as the military and strategic. Information was systematically extracted from Japanese trading companies and government agencies from at least 2007. 46 Little, if any was terrorism-related. When his request for Japanese cooperation in gathering data – basically all and any data – was met with the Japanese response that the law would not allow it, Snowden’s NSA masters solved the problem by adopting a radical solution: 44

45

46

“Preliminary observations by the United Nations Special rapporteur on the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, Mr David Kaye at the end of his visit to Japan (12–19 April 2016),” http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews. aspx?NewsID=19842/ Edward Snowden interviewed by Ogasawara Midori, “Naze watakushitachi wa Beikoku no ‘kanshi’ o yurusu no ka,” Gendai, 22 August 2016,” also “Bei ga Nihonjin no joho shushu Sunoden-shi ga keikoku,” Tokyo shinbun, 15 February 2016. “Sunoden no keikoku ‘boku wa Nihon no mina-san o honki de shimpai shite imasu,” Gendai, 22 August 2016. (And “Bei ga Nihonjin no joho shushu Sunodenshi ga keikoku,” Tokyo shimbun, 15 February 2016.)

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they designed and promoted the bill that eventually became the Japanese “Special Secrets” law, adopted late in 2003. Asked whether he meant that ordinary Japanese people and businesses were therefore under surveillance, he replied “yes of course.” What surprised him was that the Government of Japan did whatever it was asked; it was “unbelievably cooperative.”47 Adopting the principles and procedures of the NSA could be expected to lead to Japanese outcomes likewise following the US, with massive data collection of Japanese citizens on the “collect it all” principle. Wikileaks in July 2015 revealed that this plainly illegal extraction process, which it dubbed “Target Tokyo,” involved US government spying on major communication lines – of the cabinet office, the economics and trade ministry (METI), the Bank of Japan, major trading and energy-related companies, and the residences of selected individuals.48 Evidence of how deeply the Japanese state itself had been infiltrated and was being controlled by the government of the United States would assuredly be classified as “specially designated” secret. There could be no higher secret than that Japan was itself a client state. It meant that the US National Security Agency (and therefore the US government) was privy to Japan’s innermost deliberations on virtually anything: “agricultural imports and trade disputes, negotiating positions in the Doha Round of the World Trade Organization, Japanese technical development plans, climate change policy, nuclear energy policy and carbon emissions schemes … and the content of a confidential Prime Ministerial briefing that took place at Shinzo Abe’s official residence.”49

Once the conspiracy law was adopted, on pretext of confirming charges, the authorities would be enabled to dig even further into all communications, while the Secrets Law offered no protection for whistle blowers. In a number of other countries, notably Germany and Indonesia, similar revelations sparked outcry.50 Chancellor Merkel appears to have 47 48 49

50

Ogasawara, ibid. Wikileaks, “Target Tokyo,” https://wikileaks.org/nsa-japan/, 31 July 2015. Wikileaks, “Target Tokyo,” Press Release,” 31 July 2015, https://wikileaks.org/nsajapan/ For a series of articles addressing the German case: “NSA Spying scandal,” http://www.spiegel.de/international/topic/nsa_spying_scandal/ On Australian

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spoken in severe terms to President Obama about the revelation of her own phone being tapped. In Japan, however, the response was muted. A “senior source” within the government commented that he had no reason to think anything damaging to the relationship of trust between the two countries was taking place and Prime Minister Abe simply said it would be “extremely regrettable” if an allied country were really to do what the United States was alleged to be doing.51 Concurrent with the secrecy bill, the Japanese government in December 2013 established a National Security Council modelled on the US’s National Security Agency (NSA). According to one report, NSA operated “at least three bases” in Japan and had contributed “more than half a billion dollars to help finance the NSA’s facilities and operations.”52 While turning a blind eye to the American infringements on Japan’s sovereignty by allowing it to spy with impunity on its citizens and institutions, from 2013 the Japanese ability to spy on its own citizens got a significant uplift as the American parent organization transferred to its Japanese NSC “state of the art” devices such as the XKeyscore, the mass surveillance tool that enables almost unlimited surveillance of anyone anywhere in the world.”53 Japan could thenceforth monitor its citizens’ telephone and email communications on the NSA’s “collect it all” principle. The Japan Times raised a large question: “One wonders whether the Japanese NSC will have the ability and courage to think rationally when Japan’s security and diplomatic interests differ from the US’s and take an independent line.”54

The history of Okinawa post-reversion to Japan in 1972, even indeed from pre-reversion, well illustrates the principle that a government given the power to cover its tracks and evade responsibility for bad

51

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54

cooperation with the US in spying on Indonesia, Richard Tanter, “Indonesia, Australia, and the Edward Snowden legacy:” Shifting asymmetries of power,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 3 March 2014. http://apjjf.org/2014/12/10/ Richard-Tanter/4088/article.html/ Ogasawara Midori, “Snowden ga Nihon ni toikakeru mono,” Sekai, November 2016, pp. 126–135, at pp. 131–132. Ryan Gallagher, “Japan made secret deals with the NSA that expanded global surveillance,” The Intercept, 24 April 2017, http://theintercept.com/2017/04/24/ japan’s-secret-deals-with-the-NSA-that-expand-global-surveillance/ See “XKeyscore” in Wikipedia. For copies of NSA documents authorizing the transfer, dated 19 April 2013, see Gallagher, op. cit. “NSC Council has dangerous flaws,” editorial, Japan Times, 1 December 2013.

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or disastrous consequences of its actions is likely to use it. The “reversion” record is one of government deception, cover-up, manipulation and intimidation, with a ruthlessness shown towards the citizen’s opposition movement or journalists trying to uncover the depths of that wrong-doing that augurs badly for the future in which governments are armed with new powers under the Secrets Law and the Conspiracy Law. The system rested on the supine conformity of those at its middle and base levels. It prompts Hosei University’s Yamaguchi Jiro to reflect that “the country in which politicians and officials grovel before the authorities will sooner or later collapse.”55 Suffice it here to recall the case of Nishiyama Takichi, sometime Mainichi Shimbun journalist, who in 1971 first published details of part of the secret deal for Okinawa’s “reversion” to Japan. For revealing that the Government of Japan would pay, secretly and illegally, the sum of $4 million supposedly due from the United States for restoration of lands to be returned to Okinawan owners, he and the whistle-blowing Foreign Ministry woman who supplied him with the documents were both arrested and indicted for breach of the public servants secrets law. They also suffered public humiliation over the exposure of their personal relationship. Three decades were to pass before Nishiyama’s story was confirmed, from US archival sources (and later still by the officials who had served at the time in the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs). In the meantime, successive governments maintained the stance that there were no secret documents, none more vehemently than Chief Cabinet Secretary Abe Shinzo (as he then was) in February 2006.56 Of the $4 million to which Nishiyama drew attention, it turned out that more than three-quarters did not anyway go in compensation to Okinawan landowners but directly to the US military, and it was only a tiny item in the context of total Japanese payments in the vicinity of $350 million.57 Nishiyama lost his job and reputation and was still, nearly 40 years later, pursuing the government for full disclosure.58 In April 2010 the Tokyo court ordered the Ministry to search its records, hand over documents concerning the Okinawa reversion and to pay a nominal sum to Nishiyama and each of the 25-person plain55

56 57 58

Yamaguchi Jiro, “Honne no koramu – Kuni ga horobu toki,” Tokyo Shimbun, 28 May 2017. “Nishiyama jiken,” Wikipedia. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Okinawa taimusu, May 2007, quoted in “Nishiyama jiken,” Wikipedia, op. cit. For fuller discussion, Satoko Norimatsu and Gavan McCormack, Resistant Islands – Okinawa Confronts Japan and the United States, Rowman and Littlefield, 2013.

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tiff group. It took the unprecedented step of criticizing the Ministry’s “insincerity” in “neglecting the public’s right to know,” and noted its suspicion that the Ministry might have deliberately destroyed sensitive documents.59 As the Ryukyu shimpo put it, the case revealed “the priority attached to ‘putting a seal on state lies’ in government by bureaucrats for bureaucrats.”60 Japan chose to serve Washington even to the extent of deceiving its own people, and then lied about it for nearly 40 years afterwards. In September 2011, the Tokyo High Court at last ruled that a secret pact had indeed existed and that the Government of Japan needed to conceal the process because it did not want the public to think it had “bought back Okinawa,” and declared that it was “highly likely these papers were kept in an unconventional way… and cannot be denied they were secretly abandoned.” Yet it went on to rule that the state had to be believed when it said it had conducted a search and so “it cannot be said that the state owns these papers.” It amounted in essence to a ruling that what the state said did not exist did not exist. The court refused to pursue the state’s responsibility for concealment and/ or destruction of state documents.61 The Nishiyama story provides a window on how the Japanese state handles information that affects the way it is perceived by its own people in cases when no legitimate state concern is at issue. In short, the state is a chronic, habitual liar, denying the truth and striving to conceal or destroy potentially embarrassing documents that might allow it to be revealed. Togo Kazuhiko, who in 1998 was head of the treaties section of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told a Diet investigation in March 2010 that he had drawn up a set of 58 documents on “secret agreements.” If the Ministry was to be believed, they no longer (as of 2010) existed. As to what might have happened to them, he told the Diet that he “had heard” of a process of deliberate destruction that preceded the introduction of Freedom of Information in 2001.62 59

60

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62

“State told to come clean on Okinawa,” Asahi shimbun, 10 April 2010; Masami Ito, “Court: Disclose Okinawa papers,” Japan Times, 10 April 2010. “Kaiji sosho kesshin, mitsuyaku gaiko no fusaku-i o tate,” editorial, Ryukyu shimpo, 19 May 2011. “High Court overturns ruling on disclosure of Okinawan reversion papers,” Mainichi shimbun, 29 September 2011. “Mitsuyaku bunsho, doko e kieta,” Asahi Shimbun, 20 March 2010. See discussion in Norimatsu and McCormack, Resistant Islands, pp. xxx

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Nothing could better illustrate the relative weight the government attached to “secrecy” on the one hand and “freedom of information” on the other than such efforts to which Togo was referring, on the eve of the Freedom of Information law coming into effect in 2001, to “clean up” the records. The Asahi Shimbun reported a large-scale operation to destroy archival materials, disposing of them at the rate of two tons per day, some of it processed and returned to the Ministry (of Foreign Affairs) in the form of toilet paper.63 The Moritomo and Kake affairs testify to the continuing prevalence of such values on the part of the Abe government while the legal warrant for such anti-democratic practice was reinforced by the Secrets Law of 2013 and the Conspiracy Law of 2017. ABE TRIUMPHANT, OCTOBER 2017

On the occasion in 2017 of the 72nd anniversary of its surrender, at Japan’s helm stood a leader who looked with pride on Japan’s feudal and fascist past and was at once deeply hostile towards the United States and yet servile to it, being perhaps the most enthusiastically pro-American of contemporary world leaders. Without serious opposition in the Diet, he seemed set to become the longest lasting and most “successful” of all modern Japan’s Prime Ministers. Yet whether he had really re-energized and revitalized Japan and made it more beautiful was moot. Abe’s ikkyo politics alienated many and his political program was less coherent than his slogans suggested. Neo-liberal economic measures had failed to generate the elusive target of 3 per cent growth, and the precariat was gradually replacing the middle class, The anxieties of a collapsing middle class and of widespread youth un- and under-employment created a fertile field for political manipulation and hate speech, while military build-up, alliance reinforcement and war exercises did little to give people a sense of security. His passion for revision of the constitution and for restoring the national nuclear grid were not widely shared. His core Abe agenda of revision of the Constitution’s Article 9 was supported (in October 2017) by just 34 per cent of people.64 The suspicion of corruption and concealment in the Moritomo and Kake affairs, and of the excessive concentration of power in his own 63

64

“Kimitsu bunsho, tokashite katamete toiretto pepa ni Gaimusho,” Asahi Shimbun, 11 July 2009. “Shuinsen toreendo chosa,” ibid.

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and his associates’ hands, grew. In the early summer of 2017, 80.9 per cent of people in one survey professed an inability to accept the Abe government’s explanation of the Kake affair.65 Fresh and damaging allegations continued to circulate and to merge with fears and suspicions over the Special Secrets Law of 2013 and the Conspiracy Law of 2017 to undermine Abe’s government. Abe came to be even less popular in Japan than Donald Trump in the United States. From May, polls registered sharp decline in figures of support for his cabinet.66 In July, the two major newspaper polls, Asahi and Yomiuri, both recorded support for the government at 33 and 35 per cent respectively, non-support at 47 and 48 per cent. But just as his support was sinking in 2017 towards crisis level and as calls for reconvening of the Diet and opening formal investigations into the Moritomo and Kake matters were becoming insistent, in September Abe took a bold gamble, dissolving the Diet and calling a general election (for 22 October). He thus seized the political initiative while the principal opposition Democratic Party was in disarray as one leader had just resigned and another was struggling to establish party coherence, and while unease over the possibility of a renewed Korean and regional war was rising, and North Korean missiles and its presumed hydrogen bomb test diverted attention away from the swamp that was beginning to rise around his government The Diet still had fourteen months to run and he already held a “super” (more than two-thirds) majority, so an election was unnecessary. A majority (65 per cent of people) saw the premature dissolution on the pretext of a “national crisis” (kokunan) as unwarranted.67 For him to reconvene and then summarily dissolve the Diet was unprecedented as well as being probably unconstitutional (as noted above). One prominent academic critic likened the 2017 dissolution on grounds of the North Korean threat to the Nazi manipulation of the February 1933 Reichstag Fire to subvert parliamentary processes 65

66

67

“Ankoku seiji no bunkajin gakusha issai soki, ‘Abe oroshi’ no dai gassho,” Nikkan gendai, 29 May 2017. Hokkaido Shimbun’s late May 2017 survey registered a twelve point decline over the month (53 points to 41), and Nihon Keizai Shimbun found an even more precipitous decline, from 52.1 per cent to 25.1 per cent as of late May “Abe naikaku shijiritsu kyuraku no shogeki ‘Shokyokuteki shiji so’ tsui ni soppo,” Nikkan gendai, 5 June 2017. “Shuinsen torendo chosa ‘Naikaku fushiji 46% to gyakuten, hirei jimin 24%, kibo 14%,” Tokyo shimbun, 2 October 2017.

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and spread fear and hatred of communists, opening the door to the Hitler dictatorship.68 In the ensuing 22 October 2017 general election, only a little more than half of the people (53.68 per cent) actually voted, but it was enough for Abe to gain the support of 48 per cent of the votes cast in the small seat electorates and 33 per cent in the preferential section to gain a “landslide” triumph, with 75 per cent of Diet seats. Opposition parties (as a whole) gained 50.68 per cent of the votes cast but just 22 per cent of seats. Abe’s term at the helm of the Japanese state seemed assured for a further three years.69 Yet there was little enthusiasm for him or for an Abe third term as Prime Minister (2018–2021).70 In fact only a minority of people (31.9 per cent) supported any political party at all,71 and membership of the the LDP had declined from a peak around 1990 of five million to below one million as of 2015, even though it still possessed formidable organization and resources.72 The post-election political pattern saw two major conservative parties (LDP and Komeito) with a two-thirds majority of seats (312 of 465), fifty-nine more (to a total of 361) if the conservative “Hope” and “Japan Restoration” parties are added, while the three left of center opposition parties (Constitutional Democratic Party, Japan Communist Party, and Social Democratic Party of Japan) held just 67 seats between them. Yet despite Abe’s overwhelming domination of the Diet, surveys showed a majority (53 per cent) unconvinced by his proposed consitutional revision agenda (seeing it as “unnecessary”).73 More people did not support the Abe government than supported it (47.5 per cent to 42.4 per cent) and more would prefer one or other alternative to Abe as party head, and Prime Minister, in the LDP election in the 68

69

70

71 72

73

Yamaguchi Jiro, “‘Han Abe seiji’ seiryoku de kyoto o,” Shukan kinyobi, 29 September 2017, pp. 16–17. A Kyodo survey, however, found that only 41 per cent of people favoured an Abe third term, 51 per cent being opposed (“Abe seiken hossoku 5 nen, kokunan seiji ni shushifu o,” Ryukyu shimpo, 27 December 2017). 41 per cent of people in favour, 51 per cent opposed (“Abe seiken hossoku 5 nen, kokunan seiji ni shushifu o,” Ryukyu shimpo, 27 December 2017). “Shuinsen torendo chosa,” op. cit. “27 nenmatsu jiminto insu zennenhi ichirawi zo no 98 man 7 sen nin, 120 man nin no mokuhyo wa mitassei,” Sankei shinbun, 8 March 2016. “9-jo kaiken fuyo kahansu, kokkai giron ‘isogazu’ 67%, kempo seron chosa,” Tokyo shimbun, 3 January 2018

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fall of 2018.74 While the parliamantary conservatives agreed for the most part on constitutional reform, close military cooperation with the US, non-negotiation with North Korea, tightened security, secrecy and conspiracy laws and restoration of the nuclear power system, the liberal/ communist opposition opposed revision of the constitution, wanted to rescind the Secrets and Conspiracy laws, wind up the nuclear sector, investigate the Moritomo and Kake matters, and outlaw discriminatory “hate speech.”

74

“Sagawa-shi shogen 72% nattoku dekizu, kaizen ‘shusho ni sekinin’ izen 65%,” Tokyo Shimbun, 2 April 2018.

Chapter Nine

Conclusion ™

The US sponsored system, the constitution of 1946 and the San Francisco Treaty of 1951, undoubtedly liberated Japan from fascism and militarism, but the package was problematic. Japan’s contemporary problems are rooted in the contradictory “imperial democracy” formula adopted in the wake of the war, involving a tendentious combination of scapegoating, cover-up, forgetfulness and submission on Japan’s part and assumption of ongoing imperial prerogative on that of the US. Both General MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito were in agreement that the Japanese people were fickle and “marked by a willingness to be led” (Hirohito in 1947) and childlike (“measured by the standards of modern civilization … a boy of twelve as compared with our development of 45 years,” as MacArthur put it in 1951),1 and consequently the role of the emperor should be maintained at “head” of the state (MacArthur in 1946), which in turn entailed the rewriting of history and the shifting of the emperor’s wartime responsibility down to subordinates. Overall, both sides agreed that the US should retain authority over Japan, especially its security. As Hirohito put it to MacArthur in 1947, Japan’s security depended on “initiatives taken by the United States, representing the Anglo-Saxons,” and Okinawa should remain under US control for as long as possible. Improbable as it may seem, clientelism’s progenitor was none other than Emperor Hirohito. Despite the regional transformation accompanying the end to colonialism, the rise and fall of the Cold War, and the rise of China, the set 1

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of treaties adopted in 1951 continues to define the strategic pattern of inter-state relations in East Asia and the Pacific. The single significant modification has been the “reversion “of Okinawa to Japanese sovereignty in 1972. That “reversion,” however, was in reality a formula for subjecting Okinawa to dual (US-Japan) subordination. The final grand touch, promised in March 2017 for the year 2020, is to be a revised or rewritten constitution, consolidating and extending the de facto “revision by interpretation” that has been the chosen tool of LDP governments and coinciding with the inauguration of a new emperor (from 2019). This paradoxical Japanese state strives now to further reinforce military and strategic integration with the United States on an anti-China axis. It enthusiastically embraces the erratic Trump regime and takes steps to widen and deepen its economic and financial submission. It bases its security policy on (US) nuclear weapons and its energy and environment policies on nuclear and fossil fuel generation (despite the still unresolved problems of Fukushima and the global turn away from coal). Abe’s periodic declarations about “recovery of Japan’s independence” disturb Washington because, however improbably, the “beautiful Japan” he dreams of appears to be the Japan he asociates with his grandfather, the emperor worshipping, Yasukuni-centered and “Greater East Asian” pre-1945 Japan. His obsequiousness allays, but cannot extinguish, US concerns. The apparent warmth of the Abe-Trump relationship, evident from their first meetings in December 2016 and February 2017 in New York, Washington and Florida (discussed in chapter one) was unexpected. With no other world leader does the president seem to so relish rounds of golf, and with no other does he consult so often by telephone.2 In November 2017, Trump spent three days (two nights) with his Japanese host. Tellingly, he flew in not to one of Japan’s civil airports but directly to the Yokota US Air Force base just outside Tokyo. During his Japan sojourn he scarcely ventured beyond air and land areas under exclusive US control, from arrival at Yokota (using air routes over Tokyo to which even Japan’s civilian airlines, JAL and ANA, are denied access) through helicopter flight to the US Army’s Roppongi 2

Sixteen conversations over the year to November 2017, and therefore almost certainly more than Germany’s Merkel or Britain’s May, making Abe Trump’s closest associate among world leaders. (“Reuters, Trump Favorite: Abe,” The Telegraph, 7 November 2017).

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(Azabu) Heliport, via a brief sojourn into sovereign Japanese air and land space to take in Kasumigaseki Country Club, a private resort in Saitama that only earlier in the year had admitted women as members for the first time.3 The formal “summit” lasted a scant 40 minutes, so that it would seem to have consisted of little but Japan’s professions of fealty.4 Above all, the two vowed to increase pressure on North Korea “to the maximum level,” i.e. to force it to submit or collapse. Since it is generally agreed that North Korea would never surrender, it meant that they were, in effect, preparing for war, heedless of UN principle or Japan’s own constitution. The formal alliance relationship is steadily reinforced. In August 2017 the “Joint Statement” of the so-called “Two plus Two” (Foreign and Defense Ministers) of the two countries spelled out the Trump-Abe vision of “the Alliance” as the “corner-stone of the Asia-Pacific region’s peace, prosperity, and freedom,” a partnership that was “increasingly important in promoting values shared by both nations, including freedom, democracy, peace, human rights, free and fair markets, and the rule of law.”5 The bottom line of the agreement was that Japan would: “expand its role in the alliance and advance its defense capabilities… [including by] expanded activities in various areas, such as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR)… and joint/shared use of facilities…. bilateral cooperation in space, particularly in resiliency, space situational awareness, hosted payloads and satellite communications.”

It was an agenda for high-level bilateral cooperation, committing Japan to a new level of incorporation in the projection of US hegemony over global land, sea, space, and cyber-space. In an impromptu, but revealing, exchange, Trump had this to say: “So one of the things, I think, that’s very important is that the Prime Minister of Japan is going to be purchasing massive amounts of military equipment, 3

4 5

Jinbo Taro, ‘Media hihyo,’ No 121, Sekai, January 2018, pp. 52–59, at p. 58. (on admission of women: Henry Young, “Trump plays round of golf with ‘wonderful people’ Shinzo Abe and Hideki Matsuyama,” CNN, 6 November 2017, http:// edition.cnn.com/2017/11/06/golf/donald-trump-shinzo-abe-golf-matsuyamakasumigaseki-country-club-japan/index.html/ Jinbo, ibid., p. 59. US Department of State, Joint Statement of the Security Consulttative Committee, Washington, 17 August 2017. https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2017/08/273504. htm/

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as he should. And we make the best military equipment, by far. He’ll be purchasing it from the United States. Whether it’s the F-35 fighter, which is the greatest in the world – total stealth – or whether it’s missiles of many different kinds, it’s a lot of jobs for us and a lot of safety for Japan and other countries.”6

Abe responded, saying, “We will be buying more from the United States. That is what I’m thinking.” Already by the end of his fifth year in office (2017) Abe had increased by 4.5 times (compared to the five years before he took office) the amount spent by Japan on US weapons and weapons’ systems. After their meeting, Abe lost no time in showing that he would be as good as his word by having cabinet confirm the Japanese purchases of several dozen F-35 fighters, two Aegis Ashore missile defense systems, and one, or more likely two, aircraft carriers. In that such purchases implied offensive force projection capability, they therefore breached the constitution, but it seemed not to concern either side.7 The “realignment of US forces in Japan underway since 2006 would continue, and since the Henoko construction project was “the only solution” to the Futenma replacement the two sides confirmed their “unwavering commitment” to it. The August 2017 agreement that called for the steady implementation of the construction plan, noting the adverse impact of further delays on the ability of the alliance to provide for peace and security.” It sounded ominously like a threat to the people of Okinawa that attempts to block or delay the works (already held up for twenty years) would henceforth be met forcibly (or rather with even greater force than heretofore). In the post-war world the counter example to Japan of a state with a similarly pacifist constitution is the Central American country of Costa Rica. But where Japan’s leaders have long treated their constitution’s peace commitment, Article 9, as an obstacle to the country’s performing the role appropriate to it as a “great” power, even as something shameful or embarrassing, and the country’s ruling political party has 6

7

“Remarks by President Trump and Prime Minister Abe of Japan in Joint Press Conference | Tokyo, Japan,” The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, 6 November 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/11/06/ remarks-president-trump-and-prime-minister-abe-japan-joint-press/ On the aircraft carriers, the two existing helicopter carriers were to be converted at a cost of around three billion pounds ($4 billion) to handle the jump jet fighters. (Eichel Stone and Didi Tang, “Japan plans new carrier to meet Beijing threat,” The Times, 28 December 2017.)

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striven for half a century to revise or delete it, Costa Rica, having in 1949 adopted a constitution that declared (in Article One) “The army as a permanent institution is abolished,” proceeded forthwith to do just that, abolish its military, adopting peace and human rights as its identity and peace-making as its chosen role. As Costa Rican president Oscar Arias explained to US Congress in 2013: “I belong to a small country that was not afraid to abolish its army in order to increase its strength. In my homeland you will not find a single tank, a single artillery piece, a single warship or a single military helicopter.... Today we threaten no one, neither our own people nor our neighbors. Such threats are absent not because we lack tanks but because there are few of us who are hungry, illiterate or unemployed.”8

That commitment was reflected in the election of Elayne Whyte Gomez in 2016–2017 to preside over the United Nations Conference to negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading to the adoption in July 2017 of the Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Where Japan stood with the nuclear weapon super-powers and voted against the ban treaty in July 2017, Costa Rica led the treaty negotiations. While Japan positively deters refugees and asylum seekers, admitting no more than a dozen or so each year, Costa Rica admitted a staggering one million people fleeing from civil violence in neighboring countries.9 For Japan to match Costa Rica in this area of human rights would be for it to admit refugees not in the tens but in the millions. As for energy and environment, Costa Rica already by 2016 was generating 98.1 per cent of its electricity from green sources and had set itself the goal of becoming carbonneutral by 2021.10 The Japanese state, by contrast, had been designed to ensure that no “Costa Rica option” should ever be presented to Japanese voters. In this 7th decade of the Ampo security system, a more unequal, misrepresented, misunderstood bilateral relationship between two states would be difficult to imagine. By a bitter historical irony, the Japan that resisted becoming a “client” of the great state to its west 8

9

10

Quoted in David Barash, “Costa Rica’s peace dividend: How abolishing the military paid off,” Los Angeles Times, 15 December 2013. Ito Chihiro, “Kokumin seikatsiu no hatan o maneku Abe-ryu ‘sekkyokuteki heiwa’,” Shukan kinyobi, 25 August 2017, pp. 28–29. “Costa Rica,” in Wikipedia, accessed 7 September 2017.

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for over a millennium came in just over half a century to adopt and even relish that role towards the great state across the ocean to its east, the United States. Turning a blind eye to structural subordination, Japanese neo-nationalism is essentially “parasite,” “comprador,” or “clientelist,”11 Japan under Abe a kind of US protectorate, its status is roughly equal to that of Puerto Rico (its people subordinate to the US but having no vote in US elections).12 Although no post-war leader had done more than Abe Shinzo to please the United States, his Japan was both solipsistic, intent on vindicating its troubled past at the cost of alienating its neighbors (with especially serious implications in the case of South Korea bcause of failure to resolve “Comfort Women” issues) and obedient but also resentful towards the United States. Since the turn of the century, even as Japan adopts various legislative and treaty measures to give priority to US military and strategic goals, the Japanese state, influenced by organizations such as Nihon Kaigi and the Yomiuri and Sankei newspapers, who tend to believe the Japanese malaise is rooted in the erosion of Japanese collectivist ways by US-type individualism, has been moving to re-impose the symbols of flag and anthem and to build homogeneous state rituals and school ceremonies around them. Teachers, obliged to stand and sing the national anthem (“may the emperor’s reign be eternal…”) and to do so “sincerely, with minds appropriately composed” (tadashiku kokoro o komete), precisely as during the pre-war era of emperor-worshipping state Shinto,13 sought freedom of conscience protection under Article 19 of the constitution, but were rebuffed by the Supreme Court in 2011.14 The greater the Japanese efforts to meet US demands and follow the “servile” path, the more it becomes necessary to insist on “national11

12

13 14

On “parasite nationalism” see Ishida Hidenari, Ukai Satoshi, Komori Yoichi, Takahashi Tetsuya, “21 seiki no manifesuto – datsu “parasaito nashonarizumu,” Sekai, August 2000, pp. 189–208. Nishibe Susumu, “Abe shusho ‘honto ni hoshu de wa nai’ Nishibe Susumu shi ga seiji o ippen ryotan,” Diamond Online, 3 October 2017. Hook and McCormack, op. cit. Lawrence Repeta, “Japan’s democracy at risk – The LDP’s ten most dangerous proposals for constitutional change,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 14 July 2013. And for the text of the proposed revision: Liberal Democratic Constitutional Reform Promotion Headquarters, “Nihonkoku kempo kaisei soan,” 28 April 2012, http://constitution.jimin.jp/draft/

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ism” – compulsory flag and anthem rituals, a proud and “correct” view of Japanese history, and the elevation of Shinto shrine rituals into a central role in national identity formation. The “post-war regime” that Abe is intent upon liquidating would seem to be none other than the democratic, citizen-based, anti-militarist Japan. In its stead, he strives to fuse the Shintoist, the “beautiful” and the “new.” In his two terms of government (2006–2007 and from 2012) he has widened state prerogatives, circumscribed citizen rights, reinforced national security and proclaimed a Japan whose citizens would be expected – or required – to love it (and in future to die for it).15 However, on one major project, the combined US-Japan might has been unable to impose a solution. All attempts over two decades by the two governments to persuade, buy off, or intimidate the people of the Okinawa islands into submission have failed. Modern Japanese history has no precedent for the phenomenon of an entire prefecture united, as Okinawa today, in saying “No” to the central state authorities of the world’s two great powers, blocking implementation of agreements made between them in 1996, 2006, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, and renewed in 2017. The Okinawan resistance to a system that prioritizes US strategic and military ends and economic interests over democratic and constitutional principle is stubborn and implacable. Any serious attempt to resolve the “Okinawa problem” would have to begin by setting aside the series of agreements to militarize Oura Bay reached during the high tide of LDP client-state rule and putting an end to the many attempts to impose upon Okinawa (including the islands of Mage, Ishigaki, and Yonaguni) new bases and Osprey-related facilities. It would also call for a fundamental rethinking of the notion of Senkaku/Diaoyu, framing a future for those East [China] Sea islands as a cooperatively managed “livelihood zone” rather than “inherent” national territory to be defended, if need be, by the full force of the US military under the Security Treaty.16 Above all, the Okinawan protest calls for renegotiation of the formula on which the post-war Japanese state has rested, overcoming Japan’s deep dependence on the United States. It calls, if not in the way Abe 15

16

Nagata Minoru (introduced by Gavan McCormack), “Love your state, Love your boss: Whither Japan,” Japan Focus, 9 January 2007. http://apjjf.org/-NagataMinoru/2315/article.html/ Arasaki Moriteru, “Okinawa wa, Higashi Ajia ni okeru heiwa no ‘shokubai’ to nariuru ka,” Gendai shiso, December 2012, pp. 148–157, at p. 157.

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Shinzo intended it, for the people of mainland Japan to “go beyond the post-war system” and to “take back” first Okinawa, then Japan. It has to be noted, however, as 2018 dawned, confusion was spreading within the Okinawan resistance. Governor Onaga, in his fourth year in office, continued to postpone decisive action to rescind the Oura Bay reclamation license issued by his predecessor. The proposal for a prefectural plebiscite to be held on the same day as the 2018 governatorial election (November 2018), if adopted, seemed calculated only to give the government carte blanche for almost a year on construction works. While he dithered, the Governor was said to be considering proposals for closer Okinawan collaboration in Pentagon force projection agendas – including the suggestion that the presumed need for Henoko base construction could be met by transferring some of the existing Futenma functions to Sasebo, in Nagasaki prefecture (substituting Sasebo for Henoko), and defining Okinawa’s role as global headquarters for the Marine Corps.17 It seemed to mean that for the first time, Okinawa under Governor Onaga might be about to offer the Pentagon positive collaboration, reinforcing rather than ending the prefecture’s subordination to its designs. To date, Abe has successfully ridden the contradiction between the aspiration to “cast off” post-war strictures and become a “normal” state (with a fresh constitution and unshackled armed forces) and the desire to continue Japan’s “client state” subordination to the United States, attaching priority to serving and pleasing it. But as war clouds gather over East Asia and US credibility crumbles, the future of that path becomes uncertain. Elsewhere, the certainty of other Client State regimes wavers. From Australia, the perspective of a future “without America” is contemplated as a serious possibility.18 One prominent critic takes the view that the “most likely outcome [of the ongoing contest between the US and China] is now becoming clear. America will lose, and China will win.” If he is right, the two centuries of “Anglo-Saxon hegemony” to which Japan’s leaders from Hirohito to Abe have committed the country over the past seven decades, may be coming to an end.19 The decline of that old order may be accelerated by the 17

18

19

Kihara Satoru, “Onaga chiji no ‘Henoko daitaian’ teishi wa yonin dekinai,” Ari no hitokoto, 5 January 2018. Hugh White, “Without America: Australia in the New Asia,” Quarterly Essay 68, December 2017. https://www.quarterlyessay.com.au/essay/2017/11/without-america/ For a Japanese reflection on the White view, Tanaka Sakai, “Chugoku no Ajia haken to Nichi-Go no mirai,” Tanakanews, 24 December 2017 (http://tanakanews.com/)

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unpredictable Trump-ish winds that now blow across the Pacific, but the underlying long wave of transition might be irresistible anyway as the economic gap between China and Japan already noted above widens.20 If peace could be established and the Korean peninsula “normalized,” Trump’s inclination would appear to be for withdrawal and accommodation with China. Should such a realization begin to spread in Japan, as it appears to be doing in Australia, a comprehensive re-orientation might follow. For now, however, Abe concentrates on keeping alive the San Francisco frame and on militarization and confrontation with China, Russia, and North Korea within it, readying for and rehearsing for war. But he has also shown keen interest in alternatives that fall outside the frame: whether the “Putin Plan” for Eurasia or the Xi Jinping grand BRI scheme (see above, chapter 5). North Korea serves today as the linchpin of confrontation but, given a realistic sense of urgency to avoid war, a historical awareness and some political imagination, it could function in the precisely opposite way, as the common project in cooperation and community building (such as could be glimpsed in the Vladivostok meeting of September 2017). Whether Abe will manage to modify the existing US-Japan security treaty arrangements to allow for recognition of a partnership with China, while normalizing relations with Russia and perhaps cooperating in the construction of a Northeast Asian or East Asian “community,” remains to be seen but is an option. Furthermore, the muchbruited Abenomics package has done little to bridge the gap between haves and have-nots and Japan’s society leads the world in its rate of aging. While Abe talks of “resilience,” he has no answer to the inherent geological instability of the Japanese islands and his commitment to the future of Japan as nuclear great power and exporter of nuclear energy projects to the world and promoter of high speed undeground linear transport has a hubristic quality. Internationally, few find reason to quibble with the message that Prime Minister Abe presents to multiple audiences, including the United Nations and the US Congress, of Japan as a democratic, lawgoverned, constitutional state, one with “moral standing” as a “robust democracy.”21 Within Japan, however, a critical, dissenting view gathers 20 21

See above, p. xxx. Tom Le, “The price of Abe’s pragmatism: it has hurt Japan’s moral standing,” Foreign Affairs, 23 March 2017.

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strength. Philosopher Takahashi Tetsuya of Tokyo University attaches the label “extreme right” to early 21st century Japan.22 Filmmaker and journalist Soda Kazuhiro sees what he calls a “fascism of indifference” in which the Japanese voters are like frogs in slowly heating fascist water.23 Kagoshima University historian Kimura Akira believes that “Japan is already no longer law-governed or democratic and is moving towards becoming a dark society and a fascist state.”24 Scholar of German literature Ikeda Hiroshi of Kyoto University points to similarities between Abe and Adolf Hitler.25 Political scientist Yamaguchi Jiro of Hosei University feels “a sense of crisis that Japan has begun a steep decline towards civilizational collapse.”26 Author Yamaguchi Izumi sees a “fundamental corruption of politics” spreading through every nook and cranny of Japanese society.27 One group of prominent intellectuals and writers calling itself “committee of seven appealing for world peace” declared (in June 2017) “the political system of this country has become entirely the private property of Prime Minister Abe … Japan is in this way a fascist state.”28 Little of this critical self-perception of today’s Japan survives translation. Hopefully the material presented in this book will allow more critical analysis of the present condition of the Japanese state.

22 23

24

25

26 27 28

Takahashi Tetsuya, “Kyokuu ka suru seiji,” Sekai, January 2015, pp. 150–161. Soda Kazuhiro, Nekkyo-naki fuashizumu – Nippon no mukanshin o kansatsu suru, Kawade shobo shinsha, 2014. Also, “Nekkyo-naki fuashizumu e no shohosen,” Sekai, February 2015, pp. 81–95, at p. 89. Kimura Akira, “Hatoyama seiken hokai to Higashi Ajia kyodotai koso – atarashii Ajia gaiko to ampo, kichi seisaku o chushin ni,” in Kimura Akira and Shindo Eiichi, Okinawa jiritsu to Higashi Ajia kyodotai, Kadensha, 2016, pp. 202–230, at p. 230. Ikeda Hiroshi, “Hitler’s dismantling of the constitution and the current path of Japan’s Abe administration: what lessons can we draw from history?” The AsiaPacific Journal – Japan Focus, 15 August 2016, http://apjjf.org/2016/16/Ikeda. html/. See also Ikeda’s earlier, “Nachi-to dokusai unda kiken na kokka kinkyu-ken,” Tokyo Shimbun, 26 February 2016. “Bunmei no owari?” Tokyo shimbun, 22 May 2016. “Matsurowanu kuni kara no tegami,” Ryukyu shimpo, 21 October 2016. Sekai heiwa appiru shichinin iinkai (The Committee of Seven to Appeal for World Peace Mushakoji Kinhide, Tsuchiyama Hideo, Oishi Yoshino, Konuma Michiji, Ikeuchi Satoru, Ikebe Shin-ichiro and Takamura Kaoru), “The parliamentary system of Japan is about to die,” 10 June 2017, http://www.worldpeace7.jp/

Afterword ™

Even as this study of the Japanese state moved to publication, there were signs that both the state and the international system that envelops it might be on the brink of large changes. A few final comments are called for. At multiple international forums Prime Minister Abe insists that Japan is a country that stands on the universal values of human rights and democracy and the rule of law, but I have stressed that the Japanese state is deeply conflicted. Virtually all members of the Abe government belong to an organization, Nihon Kaigi, whose reactionary blend of neo-conservatism, neo-nationalism, and historical revisionism would likely be proscribed in any other contemporary democratic state, and underpinning all state policies is the principle of faithful service to a country that is chronically war-prone and recognizes submission to no law. The humiliation for Japan bred of servility (to the United States) is compensated by the assertion of emperor-centered uniqueness and superiority, likewise at odds with the assumption of universal values. The ability of the Abe state to carry its agenda forward faces two key challenges, diplomatic and domestic. The first concerns North Korea but has implications much broader than simply the Korean peninsula. In diplomatic terms Abe’s insistence that there could be no room for negotiation with North Korea was rebuffed early in 2018 by the other major state parties with a stake in the peninsula crisis, giving way, even in Washington, to a readiness to do deals, and to a Korea-centered view, orchestrated especially by the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in. Suddenly, early in 2018, one could sense the possibility of something unimaginable a year earlier: a Korean peace, rooted in a negotiated settlement, de-nuclearized and subject to multilateral security guarantees. To the extent that the Cold War knots around the Korean peninsula might be untied by such initiatives, foreign troop occupations, in Japan as well as Korea, ie, the 100,000 that Joseph Nye insisted in 241

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1995 (above, pp. 50-51) had to be maintained in East Asia, could be withdrawn, opening the door upon a post-San Francisco Treaty, postCold War, even perhaps post-US hegemony, regional order. It would, in that event, signal also the end of clientelism. Secondly, Abe’s domestic political credibility erodes as a result of the failure to put an end to scandals such as the Moritomo and Kake affairs (discussed above, at pp. 213ff). Not only had publicly-owned lands been “sold” at a fraction of their market value to close allies and friends of the government (in the Moritomo affair), as part of an extraordinary design to revive pre-war emperor-centred values, but it transpired in 2018 that the documents relating to the land sale had been doctored to remove possibly incriminating details including the names of Abe, his wife, Akie, and his Deputy Prime Minister, Aso Taro. The Ministry of Finance, commonly regarded as government’s untouchable core, admitted to having doctored the records, one bureaucrat closely associated with the transaction died, evidently by his own hand, and another, by 2018 head of the National Tax Agency, resigned as the scandal widened.1 Since there was no conceivable reason for the bureaucrats to have acted as they did unless they were either responding to or anticipating high-level directives, and since the tampering occurred very soon after the Prime Minister had promised (17 February 2017) to resign if any connection were ever shown to exist between himself or his wife and the deal with Moritomo, the prima facie case for seeing Abe and senior members of his government liable in a case of criminal corruption and coverup was strong. It was possible, though far from probable, that Abe might be brought undone by these affairs. One key witness, Moritomo’s Kagoike Yasunori, arrested at the end of July 2017 on suspicion of corruption, was still languishing in detention as of April 2018, confined to a windowless cell and forbidden any contact with the outside world.2 His treatment as a possible major witness in a case of Prime Ministerial malfeasance recalled that in 2017 of the Okinawan peace protester, Yamashiro Hiroji, both in their different 1

2

Multiple Japanese media sources, 2018, including (for resume) “Shogen to shusho toben no zure, Kagoike shi ni kakunin e, yato kyo sekkin,” Asahi shimbun, 23 March 2018. In English, Reiji Yoshida, “Finance Ministry admits to secretly redacting official papers on Moritomo land scandal,” Japan Times, 12 March 2018. Kamei Hiroshi, “Sokkin kinshi mado-nashi dokubo Kagoike fufu no nagasugiru koryu ni moto saibankan mo gimonshi,” Aera, 5 December 2017. https://dot.asahi. com/wa/2017120500031.html

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ways – one on the “right” and one on the “left” – denied basic human rights because of their challenge to Abe Shinzo’s “One Strong” regime. In so far as the treatment of critics, dissenters and whistle-blowers is a litmus test of a democratic society, these were telling cases. Sooner or later, however, Kagoike will have to be released, and sooner or later he and his wife will tell (or retell, since it was at least in part their telling it that precipitated the crisis in the first place) their story. It will clearly be very different from that told till now by Abe and his wife. The same large doubts and suspicions circulate about the Kake Gakuen scandal (on which see pp. 216ff). It is also the case that, despite the claims to embody democracy, the rule of law and human rights, Japan under Abe was increasingly driven by military priorities, de facto revising he constitution by the adoption of legislation making possible recourse to war, stepping up military spending and purchasing large quantities of weaponry from the US (Abe publicly assuring President Trump that he would increase those purchases),3 sending Japanese Self-Defence Force units to join multilateral, US-led exercises rehearsing a new Korean War, and positively endorsing the most controversial of US policies, the insistence on the right to maintain, develop, and deploy nuclear weapons. On nuclear matters Japan resists global pressures for denuclearization and stands together with the Security Council super-powers against the small and middle powers of the General Assembly. In January 2018 the hands of the world “Doomsday” clock were moved forward from two and a half minutes to midnight to two minutes to midnight, signalling heightened risk of man-made, especially nuclear, global catastrophe.4 Yet Japan stood aloof when the General Assembly of the United Nations voted (in 2017) for a formal treaty banning not only the use or threat but also the possession of nuclear weapons. When the Trump administration published its “Nuclear Policy Review” in February 2018, insisting on the right to develop “flexible,” “credible” 3

4

“So one of the things, I think, that’s very important is that the Prime Minister of Japan is going to be purchasing massive amounts of military equipment, as he should. And we make the best military equipment, by far. He’ll be purchasing it from the United States,” (The White House, Press Secretary, “Remarks by President Trump and Prime Minister Abe of Japan in Joint Press Conference,” Tokyo, 6 November 2017. https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/11/06/ remarks-president-trump-and-prime-minister-abe-japan-joint-press/) Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, “Doomsday Clock Statement,” 25 January 2018, https://thebulletin.org/2018-doomsday-clock-statement

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(ie, usable) nuclear weapons, 5 Foreign Minister Kono expressed Japan’s “high appreciation.” Once the UN adopts the nuclear weapon ban treaty at the High-Level Conference on Nuclear Disarmament scheduled for New York in May 2018, to the extent that Japan continues to base its security on “extended deterrence,” along with its patron, the US, it is set to become an outlaw state. In that, of course, it would not be alone, but the emptiness of its claim to be a state based on the rule of law would then be exposed. In choosing to stand four-square with the United States on nuclear weapons in 2018, Japan was simply holding to the line it had articulated nine years earlier. In a February 2009 document, headed “Japan’s Perspective on US’s Extended Deterrence” and known simply as the “Akiba Memo” (Akiba Takeo being then Minister at the Japanese embassy in Washington), Japan’s then Aso Taro government had urged the United States not to cut back its nuclear arsenal but to diversify and reinforce it and to reserve an entitlement to pre-emptive nuclear weapon use, even against a non-nuclear state (see above, pp. 179-180).6 In 2009 the Akiba proposals went against the current of Obama era thinking, but in 2018 they were adopted by, or shared with, the nuclear bureaucracy and President Trump. Akiba, by then Vice Minster of Foreign Affairs and close confidante of the Prime Minister in foreign policy matters, denied the reports. Yet the documents undeniably exist.7 They are part of the American official record and at least one member of the 2009 US panel has confirmed their authenticity.8 Akiba also told the 2009 Commission that he found “very persuasive” the idea of re-establishing nuclear storage facilities at Henoko on Okinawa. In those closed door discussions, in other words, Japan sig5

6

7

8

Department of Defense, Nuclear Posture Review, Washington, February 2018. https://www.defense.gov/News/SpecialReports/2018NuclearPostureReview.aspx/ For photographic reproduction of the document, Haruna Mikio, “Akiba Memo – Amerika kaku senryaku e no Nihon no kakusareta yokyu,” Sekai, April 2018, pp. 69-78. For discussion see Gregory Kulacki, “Nuclear hawks take the reins in Tokyo,” Union of Concerned Scientists, 16 February 2018, https://allthingsnuclear. org/gkulacki/nuclear-hawks-take-the-reins-in-tokyo/ Yukiyo Zaha, “Foreign Affairs Vice-Minister Akiba denies making his 2009 statement that proposing nuclear storage site on Okinawa or Guam would be ‘persuasive,’ recorded in U.S. Congressional memo,” Ryukyu shimpo, 6 March 2018. See also interpellations in Diet’s Defence and Foreign Relations Committee on 20 and 26 March 2018 between the Japan Communist Party’s Inoue Satoshi and Foreign Minister Kono, http://www.inoue-satoshi.com/parliament/. Morton Halperin, quoted by Inoue Satoshi in the preceding Diet exchange.

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nalled not only readiness to cooperate positively in maintaining nuclear weapons but also readiness to allow their re-introduction to Okinawa. It was even conceivable that the ongoing (as of 2018) expansion of the Henoko Ordinance Ammunition Depot, adjacent to the Henoko base construction site, is part of such a design. In the era of missiles lanched from on and under sea, land, air, and possibly even space, fixed site land storage could scarcely be as necessary as once it seemed during the Cold War, but the Government of Japan clearly valued them highly and might want to “host” them anyway, tying the US inescapably to Japan’s defense. Okinawans, knowing that up to 1,300 nuclear weapons had been stored at Henoko and Kadena in the 1950s and 1960s, at a time when Pentagon planners assumed a major role for Okinawa in scenarios involving the killing of around 600 million people in the then Soviet Union and China, destroying all their major cities and very possibly bringing human civilization itself to an end, were naturally sensitive to the suggestion that such a role might be re-imposed on them.9 And finally, what of the civic challenge to the Abe state? While the baton of political challenge to Abe clientelism passed through the Hosokawa and Hatoyama governments in the 1990s and 2000s and was taken up again in 2017 by the Constitutional Democrats, but for the time being Abe’s October 2017 electoral triumph gives him a measure of security. Beyond the Diet, however, the extra-parliamentary movement of citizen democracy continues to channel civic energy into direct action, non-violent struggles, against war-enabling security legislation, constitutional revision, nuclear power generation, wasteful, environmentally damaging and unsustainable construction projects, secrecy and conspiracy laws and above all, especially since 1996 and as detailed in this book, against the constructon of major new facilities for the American Marine Corps on Okinawa. This book attributes a major role in contesting the Japanese state to the Okinawan resistance. I should therefore note in conclusion the series of reverses suffered by the Okinawan movement in 2018. On 4 February, the resolutely anti-base construction mayor of Nago City, Inamine Hiroshi, was defeated in his pursuit of a third term as mayor, following an election marked by an extraordinary level of central gov9

See the reminiscences of Daniel Ellsberg, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a /VDMFBS
8BS
1MBOOFS, Bloomsbury Publications, 2017, and Ellsberg’s interview with Fairfax media in Peter Hannam, “Setting the world alight,” Sydney Morning Herald, 9 March 2018.

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ernment intervention. No town or city mayor in post-1945 Japan had ever faced any such concerted hostile campaign by the national government and ruling party.10 That reverse was followed, on 13 February, by dismissal of the prefecture’s court action to seek a stoppage of Oura Bay works and on 14 February by the guilty verdict returned in the case against the symbolic leader of the Okinawan civic movement, Yamashiro Hiroji (on whom see above, pp. 106ff) for obstructing site works. He was given a two-year sentence (suspended for three years).11 Perhaps most serious of all, the principal umbrella organization of the anti-base struggle, the All Okinawa Council, seemed in 2018 on the brink of collapse or split.12 Furthermore, the state was stepping up the tempo of its works. Between April 2017 and February 2018, 11,615 ten-ton truckloads of construction material were delivered to the Camp Schwab construction site on Oura Bay.13 If the initial estimates could be relied on (for 2.8 million tons of fill) it would mean that there were at least 250,000 more to come, and that the onslaught was still in its early phase. And yet, despite the exhaustion from years of struggle against massively unequal odds, the daily citizen protest mobilization at the Schwab gate-front continued. As of 2018 it was not surrender that was being discussed but intensification. And there was cause from an unexpected quarter for belief that the anti-base cause would ultimately prevail. Geologists and engineers doubted that the state had any answer to the problems of the site itself – active fault lines across the Bay and an inexplicably soft “tofu-like” floor deep beneath it. They seriously doubted that it could support the massive concrete structure planned.14 The quality of the Abe state was perhaps nowhere more manifest than at Henoko. There it showed its commitment to the cause of transforming one of its greatest natural treasure houses into a fortress 10

11

12 13

14

Gavan McCormack, “Five Okinawan views on the Nago mayoral election of February 2018: Implications for Japanese Democacy,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 10 February 2018. https://apjjf.org/2018/4/McCormack.html/ See also Gavan McCormack, “There will be no stopping the Okinawa Resistance,” An Interview with Yamashiro Hiroji,” Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 1 August 2017, https://apjjf.org/2017/15/McCormack.html This complex process, ongoing as I write, defies brief resume here. Yaraso Masako, “Rondan - Oura-wan higata no shoshitsu wa mokuzen,” Ryukyu shimpo, 3 March 2018. Kitaueda Tsuyoshi, “Henoko shin kichi kensetsu wa izure tonza suru,” Sekai, March 2018, pp. 54-73.

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from which the United States could project its power over East Asia through the remainder of the century, counter to the moves towards regional peace, cooperation, and community, counter to the principle of regional self-government spelled out in the constitution, counter to the principles of democracy and counter to the imperative of environmental conservation.

Index ™

Australia, 4, 6, 48, 49, 50, 64, 77, 105, 126, 135, 138, 142, 143, 164, 165, 173, 177, 178, 238, 239

1907 Hague Convention on the Laws and Customs of War, 74 21st Century Vision, 79 31st MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit) force, 115

BAM railway, 148 Bank of Japan, 175, 222, 223 Basic Law for Biodiversity, 88 “Basic Law for National Resilience”, 170 “Basic Plan for Public Investment”, 168 “beautiful Japan”, 2, 25, 26, 29, 31, 190, 232 Beijing, 31, 68, 125, 127, 133, 134, 145, 146, 147, 148, 166 Benedict, Ruth (author), 12 Blair, Tony, Prime Minister, 48 Boston, 42 BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), 145, 165, 166 “Bright Japan”, 29, 77, 192 Buddhism, 29, 33, 189 Bush, President George H., 48 Bush, President George W., 48, 54, 132, 134, 194

Abe Shinzo, Prime Minister, ix, 11, 12, 26, 54, 61, 62, 77, 116, 121, 131, 161, 186, 209, 225, 236, 243 “Abe-nomics”, ix “Abe-politics”, ix “Administrative Agreement” (Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA), 18 Administrative Appeals Act, 89, 90, 92, 93, 118 Afghan war, 193 Afghanistan 46, 189 Air Self Defense Force (Japan), 23, 138 Akihito, Emperor, 13, 73, 201, 202, 203, 204, 206 Amami Islands, 20, 66, 68, 152 “AmpoKokutai” (Security Treaty version of National Polity), 18 ANA airline, 232 Asahi Shimbun, 26, 227 ASEAN (Association of Souheast Asian Nations), 125 “ASEAN+3”, 125, 126 ASEAN + 6, 125 ASEAN + 8, 125 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), 125 Association for Shinto Politics, 192 Association of Shinto Shrines (Jinja Honcho), 30 asylum seekers, 44, 245 Atsugi(Tokyo), 156

California, 35, 42, 124, 154 Cambodia, 22 Camp Gonsalves, 75 Camp Hansen, 110 Camp Schwab, 97, 101, 106, 110, 246 “Camp Schwab gate”, 101, 112 Canada, 31, 64, 164, 165 Center for Strategic and International Studies, (CSIS) 51, 53, 58, 59, 60, 164 CH46 helicopter, 80 Cheney, US Vice-president Dick, 129 Chilcot[Sir John] Report, 49, 50 China, 3, 15, 17, 18, 25, 30, 35, 36, 44, 46, 50, 52, 53, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 249

250

INDEX

74, 77, 120–8, 135, 145, 146, 148, 149, 150, 151, 154, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 166, 183, 186, 187, 210, 231, 232, 238, 239, 245 Chinese Navy, 41, 124, 152, 153 CIA, 19, 52 “Class A” war criminals, 29, 201 “Client State” (Zokkoku), ix, x, 2, 3, 43, 45–65, 70, 147, 149, 193, 194, 223, 237, 238 Climate Change Performance Index, 172 Clinton, Bill, 51, 132 Cold War, 3, 7, 20, 22, 27, 50, 51, 68, 69, 78, 124, 126, 128, 146, 147, 149, 163, 166, 188, 193–5, 205, 219, 231, 241, 245 “colonial state”, 2 “comfort women”, 25, 26, 28, 29, 31, 34, 37, 62, 63, 64, 65, 72, 162, 236 Committee to Produce New History Textbooks (Tsukurukai), 29 “Conspiracy Law”, 217, 220, 223, 225, 227, 228, 230, 245 Constitutional Democratic Party, 229, 245 Constitutional Research Councils, 36, 193 “construction state”, ix, 2, 167–89 Criminal Code (Article 185), 189 CVID formula, 136, 137, 140, 146 Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), 33, 54, 55, 56, 59, 76, 150, 160, 161, 169, 180, 200, 228 Deng Xiaoping (leader, People’s Republic of China), 169, 160 Department of Defense (Japan), 80, 81, 88 Department of General Affairs, 89, 92 “Designated Special Secrets Protection Law”, 221 Diet, the ix, 1, 2, 7, 20, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 32, 34, 37, 39, 56, 58, 71, 77, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 108, 113, 162, 189, 190, 192, 193, 198, 199, 204, 208, 211, 212, 217, 219, 221, 226, 227, 228, 229, 245 Doha Round (World Trade Organization), 223

East Asia, 13, 26, 27, 75, 120, 121, 124, 126, 194, 232, 238, 242, 247 East Asian Economic Group (EAEG), 126 East China Sea, 3, 41, 44, 124, 153, 156, 157, 163, 183, 187 “East Sea Community”, 122 Eastern Economic Forum (EEF), 145 Ehime Prefecture, 213 emperor system, 2, 5, 6, 8, 10, 14, 15, 191, 205, 206, 207, 208 Etorofu (Iturup), 147 European Union, 31, 36 Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), Japan 152 Fisheries Regulation Law, 98 Ford, Gerald (President), 48 France, 36, 38, 67, 135, 186, 189 Free Trade Zone, 78, 125, Freedom of Information law, 227 FRF (Futenma Replacement Facility), 74 FTAAP (Free Trade Area of Asia and the Pacific), 125 Fuji TV, 60 Fukuda Yasuo, Japanese Prime Minister, 127 Fukuoka High Court, 90, 95, 96, 118 Fukushima, 57, 169, 170, 171, 173, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 232 Fundamental Law of Education, 27, 30, 72, 211 G7 Summit, 37 Galapagos, 86 Germany, 33, 53, 105, 135, 168, 181, 182, 186, 189, 192, 223, 232 Gifu prefecture, 184 Ginowan City, 84, 109 Ginoza Village, 69 Giri, 13 Global Pension Investment Fund (GPIF), 42 global warming, 3, 174, 185 Great Tohoku Seawall, 183 Greater East Asia, 13, 26, 232 Green Day, 13

INDEX

Ground Self Defense Force (GSDF), 23, 151 Guam International Agreement, (GIA) 75 Habomai, 147 Harbin (Northeast China), 25 Hatoyama Yukio, Prime Minister, 47, 127 Hawaii, 77 Hawke, Bob, Australian Prime Minister, 125 Heisei era, 13 Henoko Bay, 74 Higashi village, 102 high-speed rail (shinkansen) projects, 42 Hinomaru, 30, 198 Hirohito, Emperor, 8, 10, 13, 21, 28, 52, 60, 191, 192, 201, 231 Hiroshima, 139, 178, Hitler, Adolf, 240 Hiyane Teruo (University of the Ryukyus), 163 Hokama Shukichi (mayor, Yonaguni), 150 Hong Kong, 150, 159 “Hope” party, 229 House of Representatives, 20, 31 Howard John, Australian Prime Minster, 48 Hu Jintao (China’s president), 127 Hungary, 220 ICBM, 128, 139 Ie Island, 69 Igei Island, 105 Iha Yoichi (Ginowan City mayor), 84 Ikeda Hayato (Prime Minister), 47 Ikeda Hiroshi (scholar of German literature, Kyoto University), 240 Imabari City, 213, 217 IMF, 17, 121 Imperial Household Agency, 203, 204 Imperial Household Law, 192, 204 Imperial Japanese Army, 25, 28, 63 Inada Tomomi (LDP Party Policy chief, later Defense Minister), 24, 33, 211 Inamine Susumu (Nago City mayor), 99, 116, 119

251

Indian Ocean, 23, 24, 25, 53, 54 Indonesia, 17, 123, 182, 223, 224 Intelligence and Analysis Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 46 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 107, 213 International Union for the Conservation of Nature, 173 Iraq, 23, 24, 36, 46, 48, 49, 53, 123, 131, 189 Ise Grand Shrine, 37 Ishiba Shigeru (LDP party chief ), 33, 108, 220 Ishigaki Island, 158 Ishii Keiichi, MLITT Minister, 89 Ito Masayoshi, Foreign Minister, 22 Iwakuni (Yamaguchi prefecture), 21, 156 JAL airline, 232 Japan Alps, 184 Japan Communist Party, 84, 224, 244 Japan GDP, 165 Japan the Beautiful, 2, 61 Japan’s Hokkaido, 147 “Japan-American Growth and Employment Initiative”, 42 Japan-China Treaty, 68 Japanese Communist Party, 8 Japanese Constitution; Article, 14, 70 Japan- North Korea reconciliation, 130 “Japan-US Economic Harmonizing Initiative”, 53 Japan-US Security Consultative Committee, 37 Jeju island, 123 Jimmy Carter (ex-president and presidential envoy), 132 Jungle Warfare Center, 75 Kadena (Air Force base), 20, 75, 109, 111 Kadena City, 109 Kagoshima, 77, 85, 124, 155, 156, 157, 240 Kaifu Toshiki government, 168 Kamchatka Peninsula, 147

252

INDEX

Keating, Paul, Australian Prime Minister, 50 Keidanren, 29 “Kempakusho” (statement of demand), 81 Kempeitai (military police force), 8 Kenkokukinen no hi (Nation Founding Day), 13 Kennedy, John F. (US President), 5 Kim Il Sung (founder of the North Korean state), 130 Kim Jong Il (North Korea’s), 127, 130 Kim Jong-un (North Korea leader), 134, 138 Kimigayo, 30, 198, 210 Kishi Nobusuke, Prime Minister, 19 Kissinger, Henry (US of State and National Security Advisor), 161 Koizumi Junichiro, Prime Minister, 48, 54, 130, 149, 193 Kokutai, 13, 18, 30 Kokutai (national polity theory), 30 Konoe Fumimaro, Prince, 10 Korean War x, 128, 129, 132, 141, 144, 243 Kori 1 reactor, 183 Kuala Lumpur, 126 Kumamoto, 170, 171, 180 Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, 171 Kyoto University, 32, 240 Kyushu, 11, 66, 115, 168, 171 “lawless state”, 3 League of Nations, 220 Li Hungjang, Chinese leader, 68 Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), 7, 19, 25, 32, 82, 85, 190, 198 Libya, 123, 131 Lincoln Memorial, 39 Local Autonomy Law, 91, 94, 97 Local Government Act, 93 Local Self-Government Law, 90, 97 Luxemburg, 126 Lytton, Lord (Victor Bulwer-Lytton), 221 Macao, 189 MacArthur, Supreme Commander Douglas, 4

Macron, Emmanuel (French president), 135 Mage (literally: Horsehair) Island, 155 Mahathir Mohammad (Malaysia’s), 126 Mainichi Shimbun, 32, 43, 44, 71, 95, 106, 143, 151, 153, 157, 165, 182, 186, 202, 207, 208, 213, 214, 215, 225, 226 Malawi, 220 Malaysia, 17, 126, 164 Mamiya [Tartar] Strait (between Sakhalin and Siberia), 148 Manchukuo (Manchuria), 5, 162, 221 Manila, 150, 172 Mariana Islands, 58 Marine Corps (US), 3, 20, 21, 53, 80, 141, 156, 173, 188 Maritime Self-Defense Forces (MSDF), 25 Maruyama government, 168 Meiji-Showa state, 12 Merkel, Angela (German chancellor), 135 Mexico, 164, 165, 166 Middle East, 39, 53, 60, 124, 145, 148 Ministry of Education, 72, 214, 216 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 16, 46, 130, 159, 225, 226 Ministry of Justice, 89 Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLITT), 88 Ministry of the Environment, 75, 180 Mito school, 12 Miyako Island group, 77 Miyako Strait (between Okinawa (main) Island and Miyako Island), 124, 152 Mongolia, 162, 220 Moon Jae-in, South Korean President, 64, 241 Mori Yoshiro, Prime Minister, 12, 30 Morishima Morito (London-based economist), 126 Moritomo Gakuen, 210 Moscow, 10, 135, 147, 148 Mozambique, 22 Mt. Fuji, 170 Murayama Tomiichi, Prime Minister, 62 Muslims, 1

INDEX

Nago City, 74, 79, 83, 96, 99, 116, 117, 119, 245 Nagoya, 23, 183, 184 Naha City, 82, 83 Nakagusuku port, 113, 114, 116 Nakasone Yasuhiro, Prime Minister, 22, 27, 47 Nakayama Yoshitaka (mayor, Ishigaki City), 150 Nanjing Massacre, 25, 26, 29, 37, 73 Naruhito (son of Akihito), 204 National Association for a Constitution for a Beautiful Japan, 190 National Coastguard, 83, 144 National Defense Program Guidelines, 52, 53 National Defense Program Outlines, 150 National Foundation Day, 13 National Land Development Plan (Zenso), 167 National Police Law, 86 National Security Council (Japan), 38, 224 Nepal, 22 Netherlands, The, 67 New Komeito, 82 New York Times, 7, 31, 56, 134, 137, 139, 142, 143, 176, 178 New Zealand, 125, 165 NHK (national broadcaster), 72, 203 Nihon Kaigi, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 190, 201, 210, 214, 217, 236, 241 Nihonjin-ron (Japan’s uniqueness) theory, 13 Nikkei index, 174 Nishinoomote City (Tanegashima Island), 155 Non-Proliferation Treaty, 133, 178 North Korea, 3, 30, 36, 44, 63, 122, 123, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134,136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 149, 153, 166, 177, 178, 230, 233, 239, 241 “Northern islands” (Southern Kuriles), 147 Northern Marianas (Tinian), 77 “Northern Territories”, 18

253

Obama, President, 35, 52, 62, 63, 178, 224 OECD, 121, 165, 176, 189, 200 Ogasawara Islands, 20 Okinawa, x, 2, 4, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 Okinawa Defense Bureau (ODB), 88 Okinawa Taimusu, 22, 68, 87, 96, 99, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 110, 112, 114, 115, 151, 153, 159, 165, 209, 225 Olympic Games (2020), ix, 143, 186, 209, 217 Onaga Takeshi (Okinawan Governor, former Naha city mayor), 173 Osaka, x, 72, 73, 108, 183, 189, 210 Osprey aircraft, 60, 82, 85, 187 Osumi City, 66, 77, 124, 155 Osumi Island group (Kagoshima Prefecture), 77, 155 Ota Masahide, Governor (Okinawa), 78, 149 Oura Bay, 74, 75, 82, 83, 86, 87, 88, 92, 94, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 102, 114, 115, 116, 118, 119, 173, 237, 238, 246 Ozawa Ichiro, Democratic Party leader, 55, 85, 194 Pacific Ocean, 41, 52, 66, 124, 155 Pacific Rim economies, 125 Pacific War, 4, 25 Pakistan, 123 Park Keun-hee (South Korea president), 127 “partisan state”, 129 Pax Americana, x, 37, 50, 120, 121 Pax Asia, x Pax Asia, 166 Pax Nipponica, 120 Pax Pacifica, 50 Pax Sinica, 50, 120 “Peace Preservation Law”, (Chianijiho), 218 Peace Treaty, 3, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 129, 132 PEN International, 219, 220, 221 Pentagon, The, 11, 59, 74, 90, 111, 115, 164, 186, 187, 188, 238, 245

254

INDEX

People’s Daily, 121, 125, 162 People’s Republic of China, 15 Persian Gulf, 52, 58 Peru, 43, 164 Philippines, 12, 17, 64, 77,123, 124, 196 Port and Harbor Act, The, 113 Potsdam Agreement, 162 Prefectural Assembly (Okinawan parliament), 79 Prefectural Public Safety Commission, 86 Prefectural Women’s Association (Okinawa), 81 Putin, Vladimir, 136, 143 Pyongyang, 127, 130, 131, 132, 141, 148 Qing dynasty, 67 “rampant state”, ix, 2 Rand Corporation, 193 RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership), 125 Reischauer, Ambassador Edwin, 71 Rescript on Education, 27, 205, 210, 211 Resolution, 121 31 Roh Moo Hyun (South Korea President), 127 Ronald Reagan, President, 21 Rudd, Prime Minister Kevin, 50 Russia, 3, 18, 43, 122, 123, 125, 135, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 165, 166, 183, 186, 222, 239 Ryukyu, 10, 11, 12, 16, 17, 20, 43, 66, 67, 68, 69, 75, 76, 78, 80, 82, 86, 88, 89, 90, 93, 94, 95, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 106, 108, 109, 110, 111, 113, 115, 117, 126, 150, 152, 155, 157, 158, 162, 163, 165, 186, 216, 226, 229, 240, 244, 246 Ryukyu Islands, 10, 20, 67, 155 Ryukyu shimpo, 11, 12, 78, 80, 82, 86, 88, 89, 90, 93, 94, 95, 97, 98, 99, 101, 103, 104, 105, 106, 108, 109, 110, 111, 113, 115, 117, 150, 152, 157, 163, 165, 186, 216, 226, 229, 240, 244, 246

Saeki Keishi (Kyoto University), 32 Saitama, 233 Sakhalin, 11, 124, 148 San Francisco Peace Treaty, 3, 16 Sankei newspaper, 236 Sasebo (Nagasaki Prefecture), 115, 238 Sato Eisaku (Prime Minister), 70 Saudi Arabia, 186 Sea Coast Law, 88 Secrets Law Conspiracy Law, 225, 227, 228 Security Treaty, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 27, 35, 71, 86, 97, 148, 160, 205, 237, 239 Senkaku Islands, 33, 151, 158, 159, 163 sex slaves, 26, 28 Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), 145, 165 Shidehara Kijuro, Prime Minister, 8 Shimoji airport (Miyako), 152 Shinto, 12, 14, 28, 29, 30, 32, 34, 36, 37, 62, 67,77, 192, 195, 201, 236, 237 Shizuoka prefecture, 170 Showa Emperor, 4, 10, 11, 13, 67, 202 Siam, 66 Singapore, 17, 50, 124 Sino-Japanese Treaty, 154 Social Democratic Party of Japan, 85, 229 Somalia, 123 South Africa, 33, 166 South China Sea, 39, 52, 58 South Korea, 3, 36, 51, 63, 64, 65, 122, 123, 125, 127, 131, 133, 146, 166, 186, 210, 236 South Sudan, 23, 24 Southwest (Frontier) Islands, 3 Soviet Union, 15, 17, 22, 147, 245 State, Department of (US), 136, 143, 233 “state Shinto”, 30, 67, 236 Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), 18, 110 Stockholm’s SIPRI, 186 Supreme Court (Japan), 19, 20, 26, 30, 72, 87, 93, 97, 119, 236 Suzuki Zenko, Prime Minister, 21

INDEX

Taiwan 12, 38, 66, 85, 122, 123, 124, 126, 149, 150, 153, 158, 162, 163, 182 Tanaka Kakuei, Japanese Prime Minister, 159 Tanegashima Island, 155 Tea Party (US), 31 Thailand, 166, 173 Tojo Hideki (former premier), 7 Tokashiki Island, 71 Tokyo, ix, x, 4, 6, 9, 10, 15, 21, 24, 26, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 36, 37, 42, 46, 47, 52, 53, 59, 69, 71, 76, 77, 78, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 87, 88, 89, 94, 112, 113, 115, 118, 126, 129, 130, 131, 135, 137, 146, 147, 148, 149, 153, 154, 156, 157, 170, 171, 176, 183, 185, 186, 205, 213, 215, 217, 222, 223, 225, 226, 228, 229, 230, 232, 234, 240, 243, 244 Tokyo Olympic Games of 2020, ix Tokyo Tribunal (International Military Tribunal for the Far East or IMTFE), 29 Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), 2, 164 Trans-Siberian Railway, 148 Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security (Ampo), 20 Truman, President, 9 Trump, Donald, ix, 1, 40, 41, 165, 228 Tsugaru Strait (between Hokkaido and Honshu), 124 Tsukurukai, 29, 72 Tsuruga, Fukui prefecture, 182 Turkey, 182, 199 UK, 9, 49, 186 UN Charter, 38, 137, 144 UN Security Council, 133, 140, 141, 142 UNESCO World Heritage Site, 75 United Nations, 14, 17, 22, 37, 46, 49, 65, 86, 107, 115, 128, 129, 140, 144, 178, 218, 219, 220, 222, 235, 239, 243 United Nations General Assembly, 140, 178

255

United Nations Human Rights Commission, 86 United Nations Peace Keeping Cooperation Law, 22 US Armed Services Committee, 39 US bases, 15, 20, 21, 53, 55, 85, 86, 109, 110, 111, 141, 144 US government, 12, 15, 29, 35, 36, 51, 61, 75, 80, 148, 160, 178, 190, 223 US House of Representatives, 31 US Library of Congress Research Service, 35 US Marine Corps, 3, 53, 80, 141, 156, 173, 188 US military bases, 46, 69 US National Security Agency, 222, 223 US War Department, 5, 12 Vietnam, 38, 48 Vladivostok, 145, 146, 147, 148, 239 Washington, x, 1, 3, 5, 15, 16, 26, 31, 35, 37, 39, 40, 42, 47, 51, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 70, 71, 77, 86, 112, 115, 134, 136, 139, 147, 150, 153, 156, 157, 164, 177, 193, 215, 222, 226, 232, 233, 241, 244 8BTIJOHUPO
1PTU
56, 62, 139, 150 Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal, 28 World Bank, 17, 121 World Court, 133 World Trade Organization, 223 World War II, 25, 26, 147 Xi Jinping, Chinese President, 166 Yara Chobyo, Okinawan Chief Minister, 71 Yasukuni Shrine, 28, 29, 30, 36, 37, 197, 201 Yemen, 123 Yokosuka and Sasebo (US naval bases), 21 Yokota US Airforce base, 222

256

INDEX

Yomitan Village, 105, 109, 112 Yomiuri newspaper, 236 Yonaguni islands, 158 Yoshida Shigeru, Prime Minister, 14, 16

Zamami Island, 25, 71 Zhou Enlai, Chinese premier, 159 Zokkoku, 45, 46, 47, 50, 53