Why does Japan need a pipeline?

Prime Minister Abe, in this week's mail magazine, echoes some of the media coverage of his appointment of Koike Yuriko as the new defense minister in describing her as a "pipeline" to the US: "Koike-san has pipelines to ministers responsible for defense and foreign policy in other countries, and she is well versed in security policy."

Why on earth does the defense minister of one of the world's biggest defense spenders and ally of the world's greatest military power need to have unique pipelines to other governments? If she calls through normal channels, are they going to put her on hold?

It is this cloak of meekness that Japan needs to shed if it is going to be taken seriously as a security provider. (Oh, and the sensitivity that leads a defense minister to resign after stating facts that are acknowledged more or less universally outside of Japan — but then doing that would mean "[sticking] to dry, strategic arguments," as Asahi's Tensei Jingo column warns us not to do.)

This whole sorry episode — including the trumpeting of Defense Minister Koike's foreign network — shows just how far Japan has to go before it can be called a "normal" country. For all the new laws, for the dispatches of the JSDF abroad (including the ASDF into the line of fire in Iraq), for all the rhetoric emanating from the government, the thinking of the Japanese people remains thoroughly steeped in the sentiments of "one-country pacifism." The Japanese people remain deeply uneasy about all things martial, even as they benefit from the US Military's ensuring that Japanese consumers enjoy access to Middle Eastern oil.

I recognize that the contradiction makes many Japanese uncomfortable — I discussed this here — but rather than just pausing to acknowledge the contradiction, and then carrying on as always, Japanese leaders will have to face up to reality, to stop indulging in "compassion for the people who suffered under those mushroom clouds" and start focusing on how they can actually ensure that no people need suffer the same fate again. Chances are that resolutions and high-minded statements of principles will not be enough to do it. There is a place for remembering the events of August 6 and August 9, 1945, but memory and sentiment cannot be the whole of the story.

This is the problem with the argument made in recent years by Kenneth Pyle, Michael Green, and others that Japan is the consummate realist: I do not disagree that Japan has benefited from the leadership of some extraordinary strategists since it modernized, but they have operated largely out of sight of the Japanese people, and as a result the people have little appreciation for the strategic considerations that have guided Japan's actions in the international system. I recognize this is a problem for many countries, but the problem seems especially acute in Japan. Look at the "awakening" on North Korea that has occurred over the past decade. While the 1998 Taepodong launch was important, while nuclear fears are important, both pale in comparison to public sentiment on the abductions (explained in part but not entirely by the government's emphasis on the issue). It has taken a soft, sentimental issue for the Japanese people to pay attention to a threat next door.

For many countries, even for many democracies, this would not be a problem, but in Japan security and defense policy are less insulated from public sentiment than in other democracies; indeed, in security and defense policy the government is uniquely vulnerable to public pressure, as the Kyuma resignation illustrates. While Kyuma's resignation was not about defense policy in particular, it was about defense policy in general, including how Japan should think about nuclear weapons — and even how Japan should think about its alliance with the US. A foreign policy tied to public sentiment is dangerous, vulnerable to either undershooting or overshooting, as even the US has learned in the years following 9/11, with considerable costs in blood and treasure.

Meanwhile, the Kyuma affair shines light on the problems of history. "Nuclear weapons do not fall from the sky of their own accord," notes Asahi. "People make them, and people release them on other people's orders." True and true. But what about the people who launch wars of aggression on an entire region? And what about people who wage war with no regard to the laws of war governing the treatment of prisoners of war? And what about people who are willing to sacrifice the lives of civilians in order to continuing waging their war?

Indeed, Asahi's column is a great example of how pacifists have furthered the interests of Japan's hypernationalists, because the history of Imperial Japan's aggression becomes obscured by Japan's suffering from American bombing. A responsible column would have, even while condemning the US for the bombing, spared at least a sentence to criticize the government in Tokyo that had laid Okinawa to waste and was prepared to do the same for the rest of Japan in order to resist the US.

An indiscretion too far

Under pressure from his own constituents, Defense Minister Kyuma offered his resignation to Prime Minister Abe, who accepted.

Asahi reports that he told reporters that his reasoning was based on fears that he would influence the Upper House elections.

His tenure as Japan's last JDA director-general and the first defense minister was marked by ill-considered public remarks, so it is altogether fitting that he has been brought low for violating the taboo of taboos, this after comments that publicly questioned the US war in Iraq (breaking with government policy of supporting the US rhetorically one-hundred percent) and suggested a reconsideration of the three principles on arms exports, one of the pillars of Japanese security policy.

While he may be out of the way for the Upper House campaign, I wonder if voters in his Nagasaki district will remember his comments the next time a Lower House election rolls around.

Meanwhile, I stand by what I wrote earlier — whatever the political impact of Kyuma's remarks, they, and the response to them, have been revealing.

Those other historical issues

Defense Minister Kyuma Fumio — a Lower House representative from Nagasaki of all places — remains under attack today despite backing away from his argument that the US atomic bombings "could not be helped."

The Nagasaki Prefectural Assembly has, in fact, passed a resolution condemning Kyuma's remarks.

Kyuma has once again showed his utter lack of political judgment, and, mutatis mutandis, called into question once again Prime Minister Abe's choice in advisers.

But I for one find DPJ President Ozawa Ichiro's response to Kyuma more interesting. Ozawa, in a debate with Abe earlier this week, not only condemned Kyuma but also demanded that the US apologize for the atomic bombings. Politically speaking, this is a no-brainer. The reaction to Kyuma's remarks show just how sensitive this issue is, and just how much anguish at being the only country to be attacked with nuclear weapons — and then to be allied with and defended with nuclear weapons by the very country that used them — lurks beneath the surface of Japanese society. So for Ozawa and the DPJ, facing a tough election battle, not just condemning the government for Kyuma's remarks but demanding an apology from the US (implicitly criticizing the government for being on the receiving end of historical criticism without responding in kind) seems to make good political sense.

Even more interesting, however, is what this reveals about the strong desire for independence that colors Japanese attitudes towards the US. Once again, the thoughts of Amaki Naoto are revealing. Recognizing Ozawa's opportunism, Amaki takes the opportunity to attack the whole political class for its longtime timidity on the question of forcing an apology out of the US. He wrote:

Japan, as the only country to be attacked with atomic bombs, should seek an American apology limited not just to our country, but, so to ensure that no other people undergoes this tragic experience, it is our responsibility to show our leadership qualities and take the initiative and demand that the US, which committed a crime, totally abolish nuclear weapons from the earth. The Japanese prime minister's demanding an apology from the US before the eyes of the world — this would strongest demand for an apology, and it would be a demand for an apology that the US could not refuse.

However, successive LDP cabinets have not tried even once to demand this from the US. Of course, this is also Ozawa. On the contrary, by virtue of being defended by the US nuclear umbrella, the Japanese government has not even received a judgment from the International Court of Justice on the illegality of the use of nuclear weapons.

The pain associated with the atomic bombings is an incredibly important factor in how Japan has come to view the war and war guilt, because in a flash of light Japan, in the eyes of its people, became the first victim of a terrible new age. Even as the world viewed and continues to view Imperial Japan as the executor of an extensive war of aggression, the Japanese people themselves have long thought of themselves as victims (although being victims of atomic weapons has not stopped Japanese governments from relying on American extended deterrence).

There are no easy answers here, at least that I can see. But all of these unresolved historical issues need to see the light. If it makes for tense bilateral relations in the short term, the benefits of Japan's "truth and reconciliation" process over the long time will be innumerable, and will be felt through the Asia-Pacific region. Indeed, amidst all the talk about Sino-Japanese and Japanese-Korean reconciliation, everyone forgets the serious historical issues between the US and Japan, issues that remind Japanese of the pain of being bombed (conventionally and atomically) and then being occupied. Strategic considerations have meant these feelings have been concealed, at least, partially for most of the postwar period, sneaking out only occasionally (the debate over constitution revision is steeped with these emotions too). The US-Japan relationship is in as much need of historical openness as Japan's relationships with its Asian neighbors.

So no more taboos or sacred cows. If anything, Kyuma should be given credit for trying to look at the war through American eyes. That kind of thinking is necessary for Japan to begin confronting the past nakedly, unshielded by victimhood.

What is it going to take for Japan to do this? And if Japan were to take steps to assess its wartime past more honestly, would the US respond in good faith, dutifully looking back at its own wartime behavior?