Unease in Japan, yawns in America?

The Yomiuri Shimbun has published the results of a poll (conducted with Gallup in the US) that surveyed American and Japanese attitudes towards their respective national institutions and the US-Japanese relationship.

As the article summarizing the poll reports, Yomiuri recorded a 14% (to 39%) and 15% (to 46%) drops respectively in the number of Japanese and American respondents answering affirmatively to the question, "Do you think the current US-Japan relationship is good."

But when one looks that the detailed list of questions asked and the responses, it seems that American responses tend towards the noncommittal. In response to the aforementioned question, for example, 43.6% of American respondents either could not say or did not answer the question. A mere 10.4% said that relations were bad or very bad. Some 60% of American respondents, in answering the question whether they trust Japan, answered that they have great or some trust in Japan, compared to 30% who said that they have little or no trust in Japan. A quarter of American respondents did not answer the question about what impact Prime Minister Fukuda will have on US-Japan relations. (A better question might have been, can you name the prime minister of Japan.)

The survey also asked a number of questions about foreign policy, among which a few bits caught my eye. In a question about threat perception, there was a vast difference in the percentage of American and Japanese respondents who view the "Middle East" as a threat. (Let's leave aside the question of what this painfully imprecise response actually tells us.) 76% of American respondents said that they view the Middle East as a threat, while only 34.3% of Japanese respondents said the same. I think this illustrates one of the US-Japan alliance's underlying structural problems, namely that there is little public support in Japan for the transformation of the US-Japan alliance into a global actor active in the Middle East. Japanese threat perceptions are largely focused on (not surprisingly) two countries in its neighborhood, dropping off sharply the further one gets from Japanese shores. American threat perceptions are higher than Japanese perceptions in every instance except for North Korea and China. The US is a global security power, Japan is not. There is no way around this fact.

Also interesting was the question about US bases in Japan, which asked whether the US should reinforce its presence, hold it steady, reduce it, or completely withdraw. A sizable majority (58.2%) of Americans said the US should hold it steady, while in Japan, 52% said the US should cut or withdraw its troops (42.2% favored a cut, 9.8% full withdrawal), while 40% said the US should hold its troop presence steady. Only 1.3% said the US should increase its forces. It is unclear whether this question takes into account the cuts to which both governments agreed in 2006, but these responses do suggest that conflict over this issue remains considerable in Japan. (Another problem with this question is that responses would no doubt vary depending upon whether it was asked in a prefecture hosting US forces.)

In short, I don't think this survey tells us all that much about the US-Japan relationship, other than that the Japanese people pay a great detail more attention to the relationship than the American people do. Japanese responses tend to be more varied, suggesting the existence of real, studied opinions on the questions asked, whereas the American responses tend towards the status quo and benign responses, which appear to me to be the default responses when lacking information. ("I haven't heard anything about problems with Japan, so things must be ok.")

This is an unavoidable fact of life in the alliance. No Japanese politician could become prime minister without a considered opinion of the US-Japan relationship, at the very least. Given the frequency with which cabinet ministers are lauded for their "pipelines" to the US, much more is expected. Thanks in part to the enduring US presence, the relationship with the US is at the forefront of political discussions.

And in the US? Japan barely merits mention in debates among presidential candidates, and has even less visibility among the American people.

None of this is surprising, of course. There's nothing new about Japan's being less visible in the US than the US in Japan. But it's worth recalling when looking at numbers like this. I find it hard to believe that there's an American public opinion on the US-Japan relationship that exists independent of polls taken to measure supposed opinions.

Mr. Fukuda may desire greater intellectual exchanges between the US and Japan, but the impact of any expansion of bilateral intellectual and cultural contacts will be marginal at best — and while Mr. Aso touts the glories of Japan's cultural exports, it is unclear to me whether Tokyo can use this soft power to its advantage and raise its political profile in the US and the world at large. If anything, the cultural exports have contributed to the further trivialization of Japan in the eyes of the world. (Japan: manga and Hello Kitty superpower, political midget.)

Japan's evolving democracy...aimed squarely at USFJ?

In light of this recent post on encouraging signs that the realignment of the US military presence may at last be ready to move forward to a conclusion that satisfies both countries, I found this op-ed in the Japan Times by journalist Hanai Kiroku interesting, in that it shows how the US military presence has, in some way, been an impetus to greater civic involvement by Japanese citizens, at least at the local level.

I found these paragraphs particularly interesting:

On Feb. 17, an open discussion was held in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, on problems with the U.S. military presence. The meeting was sponsored by a local citizens' council, headed by the mayor, for promoting the reversion of U.S. military bases. Panelists included Col. David E. Hunter-Chester of the U.S. Army Japan command as well as the director of the Yokohama Defense Facilities Bureau of the Defense Ministry, a progovernment college professor, a representative of a nongovernmental organization campaigning for peace and disarmament, and the director of the local citizens' council. It was the first time in Sagamihara, a city with a U.S. military base, that officials from the U.S. armed forces and the Defense Ministry attended such a citizens' meeting.

Looking at the list of panelists, I had expected heated debate, but nothing like that happened. Also present was a Japanese activist who stages a weekly sit-in at the front gate of U.S. Camp Zama to protest the U.S. military presence. There was no heckling and no confusion, probably because the audience was satisfied that open discussions were being held between anti- and pro-U.S.-military groups. There was even a feeling that the two camps understood each other to some extent.

The audience apparently liked the fact that Hunter-Chester, who has lived in Japan more than 10 years including as a high school student, spoke mostly in Japanese. As the meeting closed, somebody in the audience shouted to him in Japanese, "Come to the next session in civilian clothes." He seemed a bit perplexed. I think it was a constructive proposal.

Many Japanese feel that U.S. forces in Japan are taking advantage of their privileges under the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement. The request that the officer attend the next meeting wearing civilian clothes symbolizes citizens' hope that the U.S. military will deal with Japanese residents around U.S. military bases from a civilian standpoint. I share the same hope.

Merely by being in Japan, the US military has encouraged Japanese citizens to take an active interest in governance. While it is unfortunate that the US military is the target of civic activism -- when there are so many more deserving targets ensconced in Nagata-cho -- I hope that the US response to opposition from local communities throughout Japan resembles the response outlined above. The US bases in Japan are, or ought to be, members and participants in the communities that host them, and US military personnel in the community should bear the same responsibilities as their Japanese neighbors.

Accordingly, rather than deferring to Tokyo -- although, of course, the central government has to play a part in coaxing or coercing local communities to agree -- the US Military should at the very least try to disarm local opposition by listening to grievances and make a concerted (and visible) effort to accommodate them.

And, with luck, the spirit of civic participation forged from resisting US Forces in Japan (USFJ) will carry over into Japanese domestic policymaking, with citizens becoming active and vocal participants in the policymaking process, rather than passive observers who occasionally voice their outrage at shenanigans in the Diet.

Changing bases

The Economist this week has an article that suggests that local officials in cities hosting US bases may finally be acquiescing to the plans formulated by Washington and Tokyo.

I think there's still a ways to go before the May 2006 agreement is fully on track, but it seems that Tokyo is finally willing to exert some effort in forcing the localities to follow Tokyo's lead; the US has agreed -- has been pushing for, in recent years -- to reductions and reorganization of American force deployments in Japan, without much reciprocation from the GOJ, at least when it comes to making sacrifices to see the deal through to its conclusion. Tokyo's cooperation is long overdue.