The US and the history wars in Asia

Jeffrey Bader, former senior director for Asia at the National Security Council earlier in the Obama administration, has drawn attention for remarks criticizing comments made by Abe Shinzō and other Japanese leaders about Japan's wartime past. As Kyodo reports:

Bader...also warned the U.S. government could be more "vocal" if Japan reviewed past statements in which the government formally apologized for wartime aggressions in other Asian countries.

Bader's statement provides an interesting contrast to more enthusiastic accounts of US-Japan cooperation under the second Abe administration.

On the one hand, the US-Japan alliance will not be fundamentally undermined by Abe and other senior LDP politicians' questioning past apologies for Japan's wartime behavior. US-Japan security cooperation is too important regionally and too institutionalized to be much affected by impolitic statements. The US military and the Japanese Self-Defense Forces will continue to train together no matter what Japanese politicians say.

On the other hand, the US-Japan alliance is not the only US relationship in East Asia and if other allies, say, South Korea, voice their disapproval about Japan's leaders directly to the US president, the US cannot be indifferent. (Japanese right wingers say the US cannot be indifferent because of the influence of Asian-American interest groups, but I don't think it's necessary to cite the nefarious influence of lobbying groups to explain why the US might have a problem with tension between its two major allies in Northeast Asia.)

So what can the US do about the "history wars" in East Asia? Is being more vocal the answer? Ideally, the first step to US involvement would be to establish just what kind of comments or behavior would draw reproach from senior US officials. Would Abe's remarks about whether Japan "invaded" its neighbors qualify? Or the US only step in when the Japanese government undermines official apologies? Would visits to Yasukuni by the prime minister or cabinet ministers draw rebuke? What about statements like Osaka Mayor Hashimoto Tōru's comments about comfort women? Would Hashimoto be criticized even though he is not a national official?

Second, would the US response be limited to rhetoric action, or would it be matched by symbolic gestures? Would the US administration withhold state dinners or invitations to Camp David?

However, the more one thinks about Bader's suggestion and its implications, the more it seems that the US is already fairly vocal about Japanese prevarication about history. In recent years there is no shortage of examples of legislators and administration officials criticizing the words and actions of Japanese leaders. As Dennis Halpin writes (pdf) in a note on President Park's address to a joint session of Congress last month, when an address by Koizumi Junichirō to a joint session was being mooted during Koizumi's valedictory trip to the US in 2006, the late Congressman Henry Hyde wrote to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, saying that to have Koizumi, a regular visitor to Yasukuni Shrine, speak in Congress would "an affront to the generation that remembers Pearl Harbor and dishonor the place where President Roosevelt made his 'Date of Infamy' speech." Of course, the House of Representatives also rebuked Japan in 2007 when it passed House Resolution 121, calling on Japan to "formally acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner" for the wartime "comfort women." The executive branch has done its part as well. For example, during Abe's visit to Washington earlier this year, Danny Russel, Bader's successor at the NSC, called for Japan to do more to encourage historical reconciliation.

A more interesting question, then, is what effect US intervention has had thus far on Japanese leaders. I think one can make the case that statements by US officials have at least helped blunt talk of revising or replacing the Kōno statement on the comfort women and the Murayama apology for the war. Perhaps it has also kept Abe from visiting Yasukuni while serving as prime minister. However, it is hard to imagine US intervention in the history wars achieving more than it already has. It is unlikely that US intervention will change what anyone thinks about history, and it may even result in more provocative statements by right-wing Japanese politicians and commentators outside government, the kind of Japanese conservatives who have found a political home in Hashimoto and Ishihara Shintarō's Japan Restoration Party. These conservatives, after all, already believe the US holds Japan in contempt — as Air Self-Defense Forces General-turned-talking-head Tamogami Toshio writes (jp) in his defense of Hashimoto — and so would perhaps even make a point of defying US criticism. To the extent that Japan's neighbors treat all provocations equally, more active US involvement in the history wars could exacerbate tensions.

Being "more vocal" may not, therefore, be without risks. There may not be much the US can do other than prevent Japanese leaders from changing the status quo in the history wars. Resolving the history issue may ultimately depend on the Japanese people themselves. As Stanford's Daniel Sneider argues in a new article in Asia-Pacific Review (discussed here), the revisionist narrative is by no means the dominant historical narrative in Japan. The only way for Japanese to change the incorrect image of Japan as a nation of revisionist warmongers is for Japanese speak up when their leaders try to rewrite history, as encouragingly happened after Hashimoto's remarks. To the extent that the US can encourage and praise Japanese behavior in pursuit of historical reconciliation, it might actually be able to do more good than if it were to step up its criticism of Japan's leaders. Of course, whether reconciliation happens will depend on the willingness of Japan's neighbors to acknowledge that most Japanese recognize the wrongs committed by their country and to come to see Japan's right wing as aberrant, not representative.

The conservatives humbled

Perhaps one of the positive consequences of Japan's economic crisis is that it has silenced Japan's conservatives.

By silenced I do not mean literally silenced — they're still fulminating. What I mean is that they have been rendered irrelevant by events. Despite their media power, their ability to churn out a seemingly infinite amount of books, magazine articles, and op-eds, it turns out that they have remarkably little to say about Japan's economic problems. Former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo is indeed the conservative poster child in this respect: eager to flaunt a rising Japan and its newfound powers, he was almost completely indifferent to the hard work of remaking the Japanese system.

But it is not just the economic crisis that has silenced the conservatives. It is the marriage of the LDP and Aso Taro, one of their own, that has been responsible for quieting the conservatives. The conservatives, with Mr. Aso as prime minister, Nakagawa Shoichi as finance minister, Amari Akira as administrative reform minister, and Hatoyama Kunio as general affairs minister, are now responsible for what happens to Japan in the coming months and years. The fate of the modern conservative movement — which has enjoyed a meteoric rise over the past two decades — is now tied to the LDP and the Aso government. Of course, it is for this reason that Hiranuma Takeo's quixotic quest to create a new conservative party (yes, he's still at it, although now the plan is to create a party after the general election) is so foolish. Japan already has a conservative party, and it is drowning as (in Mr. Aso's words) the "tsunami" of the global financial crisis washes over Japan.

What I am not saying is that the conservatives are vanquished evermore. They still have considerable power and their ideas appeal to a sizable minority. What I'm saying is simply that events have rendered the conservative movement irrelevant to the policy debate. It is little surprise that Mr. Abe has attempted to carve out a middle ground in the LDP's tax debate — Mr. Abe and his compatriots barely have a position on the issue to advance.

All of this is a way to introduce this stemwinder by Sakurai Yoshiko.

Published in the January 15th issue of Shukan Shincho, the title says it all: "In the Sino-Japanese War, China had more fighting spirit than Japan."

The essay is the latest attempt to rewrite the history of World War II along terms that exculpate Japan and pin blame for the war on China (and communism). Actually, not only does she pin the second Sino-Japanese war on the Cominform, she finds a new, somewhat surprisingly culprit in the widening war: the Nazi Party, which she blames for providing military assistance to Chiang Kai-shek during the 1930s. In other words, Ms. Sakurai blames any outside power that enhanced the ability of Chinese forces to resist Japan for widening the Sino-Japanese war, instead of blaming the military that was invading China, as if the Chinese people were just supposed to accept the advance of the Imperial Military passively.

I don't want to get bogged down in the history, because the conservative obsession with history is precisely the problem. The conservatives are so obsessed with making the case for the Pacific/Great East Asian War as a just war that they have nothing relevant to say about the many problems facing the Japanese people today.

As such, the more the conservatives are ignored, the better. Japan and the world have too many problems to be consumed with fighting old wars and nursing old hatreds, while looking to stir up new ones. This is, to some extent, the message of President Obama's inaugural address: "...an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics." He was talking about American politics, but he might as well have been talking about the history problem in East Asia.

General Tamogami refuses to fade away

Is Tamogami Toshio a millstone around Aso Taro's neck?

The now former chief of staff of the Air Self-Defense Forces (ASDF) appeared before the House of Councillors foreign and defense affairs committee and continued his determined campaign to dispel the postwar consensus on Japan's wartime past.

In his remarks, General Tamogami appeared to play dumb. Asked about the Murayama statement, in which then-Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi made a sincere apology for Japan's wartime behavior (and argued that "Japan must eliminate self-righteous nationalism"), the general hid behind his and his fellow airmen's right to freedom of speech. He noted that his essay said nothing about the Murayama statement and asserted that even JSDF members have the right to freedom of speech.

The essence of civilian control is that the prime minister is the commander-in-chief of the JSDF and the Diet is responsible for "basic administration." While it is true that General Tamogami did not use the phrase "Murayama statement" in his essay, only a fool would be satisfied with that answer; General Tamogami's essay was all about the Murayama statement and the worldview that produced it and has sustained it in the thirteen years since it was promulgated. The general certainly knew what he was doing. Say what you will about Japan's revisionists, but they are not fools (as in the case of the Nanjing massacre: most don't deny that something happened in Nanjing, but many turn it into a matter of numbers, shifting the discussion from the enormity of what the Imperial Army did in Nanjing to China's purported manipulation of the figures to make Japan look bad).

Of course, now that he is out of the service General Tamogami did not hesitate to criticize the Murayama statement, describing it as "an instrument for the supression of one's opinions." But questioning the fact that ninety-seven members of the JSDF submitted essays to a revisionist essay contest is not the suppression of the freedom of speech — it is the reassertion of civilian control. The SDF ethos encourages SDF personnel to "refrain from taking part in political activities." While the APA essay contest may not have technically been a "political activity," the submission of essays by JSDF personnel was effectively political. By questioning the civilian government's official position on Japan's wartime history (Mr. Aso reaffirmed the Murayama statement in Diet interpellations in early October, although there are now questions as to whether Mr. Aso has accepted the Murayama statement), General Tamogami was deliberately insubordinate to his commander-in-chief, and given that his essay had the potential to undermine the government's efforts to build closer relations with China and South Korea, it is hard to see this affair as anything but interference by a senior JSDF officer in political matters. Merely asking the general to surrender his pension is mild, considering that he had been openly calling for historical revisionism for years before this incident.

On balance, I'm not sure whether this hearing was a good thing. I certainly think that it's better that these views are out in the open, but it seems that all the hearing accomplished was assisting General Tamogami in his transition from ASDF general to right-wing pundit. It won't be long now before he is a regular contributor to Voice and Will. He is already being treated as a matyr for the cause by his fellow revisionists; for example, Hiranuma Takeo, former LDP member and adviser to Nakagawa Shoichi's "True Conservative Policy Research Group," has criticized the defense minister's request that the general gave up his pension. It may have been better off to let General Tamogami fade away, as another loudmouth general disrespectful of his civilian masters once said of old soldiers. (The general played up his matyrdom, saying, "I think the world is full of examples of dismissal for saying that one's own country is a bad country, but I don't think there's a single example of dismal for saying that one's own country is a good country.")

Meanwhile General Tamogami has probably hurt Mr. Aso. In the short term Mr. Aso has won a small victory, for as a quid-pro-quo for the general's appearance the opposition parties have agreed to bring the bill extending the MSDF refueling mission to a vote in the upper house foreign and defense affairs committee on Tuesday and the whole house on Wednesday, freeing the lower house to pass the bill again on next Thursday. But in the meantime General Tamogami has reinserted history onto the public agenda, which will undoubtedly lead to new questions regarding just what Mr. Aso thinks of these matters. Mr. Aso has categorically rejected the general's putting his freedom of speech before civilian control, but I suspect for better or worse that Mr. Aso's comments will not be the last of this issue.

The history issue will not make or break Mr. Aso's government at home, but it does little to help the prime minister and does serve to distract his government from the gathering economic gloom. (Will the foreign press ask Mr. Aso about this while he visits Washington?) I have yet to see any public opinion polls pertaining to General Tamogami's remarks, but I expect that the public is generally not sympathetic to this perspective.

I want to conclude with a word about the general's perspective. In his remarks on Tuesday, General Tamogami raised an argument that has been made in comments on this blog and elsewhere, namely, that Japan has been unfairly singled out for wrongdoing during the war. He further suggested that talk of Japan as a bad country damages JSDF morale.

I have no idea how General Tamogami can prove the latter argument, but I am not totally unsympathetic to his former argument. However, as I argued here, simple moral equivalency between Japan and the European empires does not work. It is a lazy assertion, and when making a legal argument, as the general attempted to do in his essay, it is a baseless assertion. I understand and sympathize with the desire to see one's country as good, but whitewashing the past, pretending that the sorry moments of history were either not sorry or did not happen is no way to glorify one's nation. As noted previously, many American suffer from a similar problem, failing to see history through the eyes of other and failing to appreciate the harm caused by Americans in the name of high ideals. I can understand General Tamogami's frustration. But the answer is not reinventing a glorious past that better serves what the general sees as the needs of the present.

Revisionist America?

At 空, Ken Tanaka responds to yesterday's post about Japanese revisionism by citing Stephen Walt regarding American "historical amnesia."

I definitely take his (and Walt's) point about America's historical amnesia, particularly in regard to Japan. Few Americans appreciate the extent of the damage inflicted upon the Japanese people, or if they do, their appreciation stops at the atomic bombings; in some way the indiscriminate bombing of cities with "conventional" weaponry was far worse. Czeslaw Milosz captured the failure of Americans to understand just how complicated, just how relative reality is in the second chapter of The Captive Mind.

"The man of the east [referring to the eastern bloc]," he wrote, "cannot take Americans seriously because they have never undergone the experiences that teach men how relative their judgments and thinking habits are.

"Their resultant lack of imagination is appalling. Because they were born and raised in a given social order and in a given system of values, they believe that any other order must be 'unnatural,' and that it cannot last because it is incompatible with human nature. But even they may one day know fire, hunger, and the sword. In all probability this is what will occur; for it is hard to believe that when one half of the world is living through terrible disasters, the other half can continue a nineteenth-century mode of life, learning about the distress of its distant fellow-men only from movies and newspapers." (29)

I hardly need to point out that Milosz's observation remains relevant to the present day, 9/11 notwithstanding. (If anything 9/11 reinforced the tendency described by Milosz.)

But historical amnesia is not the same as historical revisionism.

Historical revisionism is, as I have argued, an ideology that is as much about the present and the future as it is about the past. It is an active process. And it involves the conscious and willful denial of generally accepted facts of history. Indeed, in the process of claiming to only be presenting "the facts," the revisionists deny the very existence of facts as commonly understood. For them, the measure of whether something is truthful or not is that it serves political ends. They reject the idea of falsifiability or alternative explanations for events: look at the confidence with which General Tamogami asserted, with merely a whiff of evidence, that the Comintern was behind both the Second Sino-Japanese war and the Pacific war. Revisionists seem to care little about the credibility of the messenger or the method by which the message is produced — only the message matters. Stephen Colbert could have been describing the revisionists when he coined the term "truthiness."



This differs greatly from "historical amnesia," or the natural difference in historical interpretations between history's winners and losers. Granted, Americans have a problem seeing history through the eyes of its "losers." But that is considerably different from the revisionist project, which is a wide-reaching program that seeks to determine how Japanese citizens learn history (by infiltrating the national curriculum, which, unlike in the US, is determined by the central government), how Japanese citizens think about their own country, how Japan conducts its security policy, and how Japan conducts its foreign relations. The analogy to the US fails. Conservative hawks may downplay some of the uglier moments in American history and emphasize the triumphs, particularly international victories, but they are hard pressed to deny those moments and periods outright.

Again, Japanese revisionism is not only or even mainly about the past. By revising how Japanese looks at the war, they also want to revise how Japanese look at the postwar period. If the former was a period marked by glorious sacrifices for emperor and nation, the latter has been marked by selfishness, wanton prosperity, decadence, decay, and "Americanization." The revisionists hope to reclaim the wartime and prewar periods as sources of value for contemporary Japan.

Of course, by working so hard to correct the historical consensus on Japan's wartime behavior, the revisionists merely serve to call attention to the enormity of Japan's behavior — and alarm Japan's neighbors, who remember only too well what Japan did during the war. Revisionism amounts to calling those who suffered at Japan's hands as prisoners of war, slave laborers, comfort women, or unwilling imperial subjects liars.

Revisionism is a problem for the region. It is a mistake to pretend otherwise. Sincere advocates of a more active Japanese security role should doing everything in their power not only to distance themselves from the revisionists, but categorically denounce their brazen denial of history.

Japan's revisionist problem

In my critique of Tamogami Toshio's essay, I asked, "Just how widespread are these views in the JSDF?"

Jun Okumura quickly provided some sort of answer: more than fifty SDF members submitted essays in the contest won by General Tamogami. Sankei reports that the number of ASDF members who submitted essays is actually seventy-eight by the ministry of defense's reckoning. Asahi notes that this constitutes nearly one-third of the contest's 235 entries. Asahi also breaks down the submissions by rank and finds that of those seventy-eight, none except General Tamogami were flag officers, ten were field officers, sixty-four were company-level officers, and four were cadets. Asahi also found that sixty-two had served under General Tamogami when he served as commander of Komatsu base, which Roy Berman of Mutantfrog found plays a central role in the story of the APA essay contest. (Berman did yeoman's work teasing out the various links between the actors of this saga; it's a must-read.) The contents of the Asahi article suggest that it's possible that the ASDF officers who submitted did so after having been "encouraged" by their commander rather than out of conviction.

But that said, it's possible that despite its efforts to project a warm and fuzzy image (cf. Prince Pickles), the JSDF attracts a disportionate number of people who look longingly to Japan's past as a military power and subscribe to the conservative nationalist interpretation of Japan's wartime past.

Does it matter what the members of Japan's armed forces think about Japan's wartime past? Does historical revisionism conflict with the SDF's ethos of ensuring "the continued existence and security of a Japan that stands on the premise of democracy by protecting its peace and independence?" And if so, what can the government do about it?

I would argue that historical revisionism — as it exists in Japan — is incompatible with the SDF's current mission and Japan's security policy. Revisionism is not merely a matter of "historical understanding;" it is an ideology concerning Japan as it is today and how it should be. Go back and read General Tamogami's essay. The problem for him isn't just that the Japanese people don't know the facts (revisionists love that word) of the war. They've been brainwashed for sixty years into believing that Japan's wartime behavior was dishonorable, and this belief in turn has handcuffed the SDF and made Japan dependent on the US for its security. In short, General Tamogami and other revisionists are openly contempuous of Japanese democracy, because they view Japanese citizens as little better than sheep who have been systematically manipulated by Nikkyoso-dominated schools and the Japanese media. Does General Tamogami actually believe that he was serving Japanese democracy, whose institutions and officials have decided, with the support of the public, to constrain the SDF? Why does he think that the path to a more active security policy leads through greater appreciation of World War II? Arguably a stronger case for an active Japanese international security role would be premised on an appreciation of the folly of Japan's war, of the criminality of Japan's war, of a recognition that the acts committed during the war should never be allowed to happen again? This argument, grounded in the preamble of the constitution, has animated Ozawa Ichiro's case for a "normal" Japanese security policy.

The key point here is, as William Faulkner wrote, "the past is never dead. It's not even past." It is not accidental that the historical revisionists are also the most enthusiastic supporters of various schemes for a more active Japanese security policy, why they are the most vocal defenders of the US-Japan alliance (even as they curse the US for abandoning Japan in favor of China) and the most vocal advocates for Japanese participation in all possible foreign deployments. Reclaiming the past is their means of reclaiming the present and future — and perhaps reclaiming the present by "normalizing" the SDF is their way of making the public more sympathetic to their view of the wartime past.

The problem is that their view of the world is not of the twenty-first century. The conservative-revisionist view of international politics derives much from nineteenth-century Social Darwinism, viewing the world as a brutal, relentless struggle among nations, for which nations must steel their spirits if they are to survive. It's not enough for nations to be prosperous materially. They must be spiritually, morally, and culturally sound. Part of this spiritual soundness is appreciating the struggles of the nation's heroes. While the revisionists claim to be striving for objective truth, the value of history for them is that it's instructive, strengthening Japan for international competition. This view also leaves little room for meaningful cooperation with one's rivals.

As I've argued before, this ideology is actually abnormal in the twenty-first century and no less dangerous than Social Darwinism was in the late nineteenth, as it risks leading Japan and Asia down a path of confrontation, strife, and war. I am not suggesting that revisionists are prepared to go down the path of imperial conquest again. But I am suggesting that the mindset that produced that Japanese empire is alive and well. And don't think that China or South Korea won't mention the general's essay the next time the Japanese government talks tough on a regional dispute (a fight over a disputed island, for example).

Japan is not unique in having elites prone to this view of the world. What sets them apart is that historical revisionism is part and parcel of their case for a new Japan.

Which makes it difficult to imagine what the government can do to correct for the politically incorrect (in the sense that the Murayama statement defines what is correct) views of JSDF officers. The government can prohibit publication, of course, or implement a system of vetting the public statements of officers. Defense Minister Hamada Yasukazu suggested that more education is needed for officers. But are education — or bottling up politically unacceptable opinions — satisfactory answers? Not for me. Revisionism exists because the history problem has effectively been swept under the rug since the war ended, left to metatastize into a worldview that seeks to redefine Japanese identity by dismissing the postwar period as aberrant and harkening back to an earlier, purer time.

The government can impose all the safeguards it wants, but there is no safeguard or sanction that can change an individual's ideas. With luck General Tamogami will get the debate he wants. But in the end it will just be another battle in the culture war that has raged since the end of the war.

The Tamogami affair

The Times (of London) reports that Aso Taro may face an upper house censure motion over now-retired General Tamogami Toshio's revisionist essay on Japan's activities on mainland Asia in the 1930s.

I think this would be a mistake — as Jun Okumura noted, Mr. Aso did the right thing. General Tamogami was sacked immediately. Unless it comes out that Mr. Aso somehow vetted the essay in advance, General Tamogami's firing should be the end of Mr. Aso's role in this sordid affair.

But it is worth looking at the general's essay.

Here is my summary of the general's theses.

(1) Japan did not fight a war of aggression: it was a legitimate act of self-defense because Japan's position in Korea and Manchuria was legally recognized.

(2) The Pacific war was effectively the product of Communist manipulation: The Comintern manipulated the Guomindong into provoking Japan so that the two would fight each other. The Comintern also manipulated Franklin Roosevelt into waging war on Japan, because Roosevelt "was not aware of the terrible nature of communism" and was thus easily duped by the Communists into supporting Chiang Kai-shek.

(3) Imperial Japan as humanitarian: Japan was kind to its colonies Korea and Taiwan, and even tried to incorporate them into metropolitan Japan, unlike the European powers. Japan was also the great friend of the peoples of Asia, fighting on their behalf at Versailles and hastening the end of the European empires.

(4) "The US-Japan alliance is great, but...": The alliance is great, but if the alliance continues Japan as we know it will be destroyed. And by the way, if we hadn't fought the war we might even have become "a white nation's colony." Oh, and our Self-Defense Forces, a branch of which I command? They cannot even defend Japan.

Let me start with the obvious contradiction in his argument in thesis (1).

At the start of the essay, General Tamogami dismisses claims that Japan was an aggressor by suggesting that critics simply don't realize that Japan was in Manchuria and Korea on the basis of treaties. Later he suggests that other great powers were aggressors too. Without providing any examples, I will be charitable and assume that he is referring to the presence of the European empires in Asia as opposed to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, which don't help his case.

How is the legality of the European empires any different than the legality of Japan's colonies in Northeast Asia? If anything, the European empires were more secure in their rights in their colonies than Japan was in its colonies, seeing as how it acquired both by coercing the governments of China and Korea. The Dutch had ruled the Dutch East Indies directly for more than two centuries. India had been directly ruled by the British empire for nearly a century at the time of the war. The French had ruled Indochina directly for nearly as long as the British ruled India. In short, international law didn't apply; a Japanese attack on these colonies was legally indistinguishible from an attack on the French or British homelands. And one may recall that Japan did in fact attack these colonies, a fact unmentioned in connection with this argument, meaning ipso facto Japan was an aggressor in the war.

Meanwhile, it is worth recalling that Japan had a reason for using international law to take control of Korea, Taiwan, and portions of mainland China. Japan made a point of conducting its imperial affairs according to international law, as part of a project of showing its neighbors, especially China, that Japan was the most civilized nation in the neighborhood. The peace "negotiations" at Shimonoseki in 1895, when Japan humiliated the Chinese envoys for being unversed in Western international law, was the signature moment in Japan's project to unseat China as the center of Asian civilization; Japan demonstrated to China that Asian affairs would now be conducted by a new standard of civilization, imported into Asia from Europe by Japan. Japan did the same with Korea, when it forced an unequal treaty on Korea in 1876. Finally, to assert that the Japanese annexation of Korea was a legal transfer of authority from the Korean kingdom to Japan — that the Korean government was signing its own death warrant of its own volition — makes a mockery of history. It may be unfair to Japan to make this comparison, seeing as how the European empires were able to acquire their Asian colonies by virtue of their denying Asian nations civilized status and with it the protection of international law, but if General Tamogami wants to make an argument based on international law, he must accept the body of international law, not just the laws that support his argument.

But there is a larger problem with the general's first thesis. Namely he completely ignores Japan's invasion of China proper (i.e., the parts of China where it did not have treaty rights), the Philippines (a commonwealth of the US), French Indochina, the Dutch East Indies, Malaya, Burma, and other territories that were legally part of the American, French, Dutch, and British empires as well as the Republic of China. How is it possible to claim that Japan was not an aggressor when it invaded and occupied these territories? General Tamogami attempts a defense of Japan's actions in China by claiming Chinese Communist and Nationalist provocation; he even uses the "T" word, claiming that Japanese forces were subject to acts of terrorism, comparing these acts as equivalent to acts of violence against US forces and civilians based in Japan. (Does he really want to make that comparison?)

But General Tamogami apparently doesn't even believe his own argument, because after explaining why Japan wasn't an aggressor, he concludes, "If you say that Japan was the aggressor nation, then I would like to ask what country among the great powers of that time was not an aggressor. That is not to say that because other countries were doing so it was all right for Japan to do so well, but rather that there is no reason to single out Japan as an aggressor nation." As I've made clear above, there is a reason for singling Japan out as an aggressor, namely because Japan had made a point of conducting its affairs according to international law only to ignore international law when it interfered with Japan's imperial designs.

Turning to thesis (2) about the communist conspiracy that produced the war, General Tamogami's argument is that the US "ensnared" Japan. But not only that, the US — specifically President Roosevelt — had in turn been ensnared by the Soviet Union. The basis for this claim is the US National Security Agency's release of the Venona decryptions, which according to General Tamogami reveal that Roosevelt was under the thumb of Moscow due to the influence of Harry Dexter White at Treasury.

The Venona decryptions reveal no such thing. (They're available online here.)

The Soviet Union had agents in the US, true. Harry Dexter White was one, also true. But to leap from there to "Roosevelt went to war with Japan because he was manipulated by communists" is ludicrous. The US decision to support China and risk war with Japan was, if anything, overdetermined. It cannot be reduced to a simple communist conspiracy. Roosevelt's reasons for war could include a sentimental attachment to China, a growing recognition of the need to halt aggression in Europe and Asia, alarm at humanitarian situation in China, and so on.

This is simply groundless revisionist history that rests more on the perfervid imagination of Japanese conservatives than on empirical fact.

The same applies to General Tamogami's account of the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese war, which, as noted above, blames the war on "terrorist" acts by KMT and Communist forces. He claims that the "Comintern theory" of the war's beginning is gaining credence, citing as evidence the controversial Chang-Halliday biography of Mao and a book by conservative hack (i.e., not a historian) Sakurai Yoshiko. He dismisses out of hand the idea that the Kwantung army and the Imperial Army bear any responsibility for actions taken in the lead up to the war.

Moving on to thesis (3), General Tamogami praises Japan for its "very moderate" colonial rule in comparison to other empires. He also singles out Imperial Japan for praise because "among the major powers at that time, Japan was the only nation that tried to incorporate its colonies within the nation itself." It is beyond me why this should be considered a good thing. Is General Tamogami really so ignorant as to believe that Japan's subject peoples — starting with the Koreans and the Chinese — were eager to be incorporated into Japan proper, eager to be made into Japanese, bearing Japanese names, speaking the Japanese language? The general suggests that Japanese rule in Korea and Manchuria were quite peaceful, that Japan brought order and civilization to its colonies. It would be a lie to deny that Japanese imperialism brought some benefits to the colonies, just as it would be a lie to deny that British or French or Dutch empires had any positive impact on their respective colonies. The only appropriate response to all of these empires is, "Yes, but at what cost?" That General Tamogami does not even consider that subject peoples might view the Japanese empire with something other than feelings of gratitude may be the most offensive piece of this essay. The general cites a number of trivial examples illustrating how Chinese and Korean "citizens" displayed their loyalty to the empire. He shows that the Japanese imperial family permitted the last crown prince of Korea's Yi dynasty to marry a Japanese noble woman. What he doesn't mention is that Japanese settlers in Asian colonies were instruct not to mingle with native peoples. As John Dower writes, "Concerning overseas Japanese, admonitions against racial intermarriage were a standard part of policy documents, and the 1943 report spelled out the rationale for this: intermarriage would destroy the 'national spirit' of the Yamato race" (War Without Mercy, 277). Dower goes on to demonstrate just how farcical General Tamogami's claims about "harmony between the five tribes, laying out a vision for the tribes – the Yamato (Japanese), Koreans, Chinese, Manchurians, and Mongols;" Japan's plan for its Asian empire envisioned the economic, cultural, and social domination of subject peoples by Japan. As Dower writes, "The record of the Japanese as colonial or neocolonial administrators in Formosa, Korea, Manchukuo, and occupied China varied depending on the place and circumstances but the basic assumption of Japanese superiority was invariable" (285).

The general also makes an absurdly ahistorical claim that were it not for Japan's conquests, it would have taken one or two centuries "before we could have experienced the world of racial equality that we have today." While it is impossible to say for certain, it is extremely unlikely that the European empires in Asia would have survived another century, let alone two. Japan's war may have shortened the empires by a decade or so, but as it happened the European powers struggled to resurrect their empires after the war thanks in large part to the havoc the European war wreaked on their economies. So again, the question regarding Japan's role in decolonization is, "Yes, but at what cost?"

Finally we come to thesis (4), which is the most confusing of them all, although the confusion itself is extremely revealing. The general concludes his essay by looking at the security policy of contemporary Japan. He claims that the Tokyo trials are to blame for "misleading the Japanese people sixty-three years after the war." Apparently the Japanese people have been duped into not trusting the JSDF to defend Japan or undertake missions abroad. To General Tamogami the restrictions on Japanese security policy are sustained only because of public pacifism (presumably the result of a program of brainwashing carried out by the left-wing Japanese media and the teachers' union). The decisions made by Yoshida Shigeru and his successors to restrict Japan's military activities, to use the constitution as a weapon against US requests for rearmament, have apparently played no role whatsoever in Japan's security policy. If only the Japanese people learn to have pride again, the JSDF can be released from its restraints.

Meanwhile, his attitude towards the US is frankly schizophrenic, which is typical of the Japanese right wing. He asserts that "good relations between Japan and the United States are essential to the stability of the Asian region" — standard alliance boilerplate. But he also says that as a result of the aforementioned restraints on the JSDF, Japan has no choice but to be defended by America. But at what cost to Japan? "Japan’s economy, its finances, its business practices, its employment system, its judicial system will all converge with the American system. Our country’s traditional culture will be destroyed by the parade of reforms. Japan is undergoing a cultural revolution, is it not? But are the citizens Japan living in greater ease now or twenty years ago? Is Japan becoming a better country?" Apparently the alliance is also a Trojan horse for the dreaded American way of life. In short, the alliance is a fine vehicle for helping Japan become normal again, but Japan must keep America at arm's length. (Interestingly, the forces within Japan arguing for economic and financial convergence with the US are often the same people who share General Tamogami's position on national defense.) This argument is hardly new, and shows that America is a convenient scapegoat for conservatives who do not want to believe that the forces reshaping Japanese society are largely endogenous, perhaps largely the product of the postwar miracle.

I don't disagree with General Tamogami's argument that Japan needs to be better able to defend itself and less reliant on the US. But he has made this argument in the worst possible way, by reminding readers of just how dreadful the war was — and how egregious the arguments of Japan's historical revisionists are (the same people who want to revise Japan's security policy).

General Tamogami concludes his essay with an appeal against revisionism:

There is absolutely no need for lies and fabrications. If you look at individual events, there were probably some that would be called misdeeds. That is the same as saying that there is violence and murder occurring today even in advanced nations.

We must take back the glorious history of Japan. A nation that denies its own history is destined to pursue a path of decline.

If only the general could appreciate the irony of the last line of his essay.

The point is that this essay is atrocious, both intellectually and aesthetically.

But that being said, better that General Tamogami decided to share his opinions with the world (although I imagine he probably didn't expect that the world would be paying attention to the APA essay contest). The world needs to know that these ideas are alive and well in elite Japanese circles. Having read this essay, I'm now especially curious about Mr. Aso's book purchase on Saturday. How can Mr. Aso fire a general for espousing these beliefs — which he continues to espouse now that he's been sacked — and then go into a bookstore and purchase a book that makes similar arguments about Japan's history?

I hope that a journalist will pose this inconvenient question to the prime minister.

I also hope that there is a full inquiry into the circumstances surrounding General Tamogami's essay. Did anyone see it in advance? Who knew what when? More importantly, just how widespread are these views in the JSDF? And, as Ozawa Ichiro asked, why was there no outrage in response to a previously published essay by the general that made essentially the same argument? To reiterate, unless it somehow turns out that Mr. Aso was aware of this essay beforehand, this is not an incident worthy of censure. But it does merit an inquiry into the state of affairs in the JSDF. I would prefer full exposure over the swift punishment called for by the prime minister for those involved.

Prisoners of war

Lester Tenney, commander of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor, a veterans organization, who spent most of the war as a prisoner of war in Japan working in a Mitsui mine, spoke yesterday at a hall in the shadow of the Japanese Diet.

Mr. Tenney is currently visiting Tokyo, hoping to raise awareness of what he and his fellow American POWs suffered and to receive apologies from the Japanese government and the companies that employed POWs as slave labor.

Before a largely Japanese (and largely elderly) audience, Mr. Tenney shared stories — both bad and good — from his time in captivity, explained why he was in Japan, and expressed his hopes for Japanese-American friendship. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Mr. Tenney is how positive he was, something that was not lost upon the audience. When he said that he had forgiven the Japanese for what he suffered, there was no doubt, no wavering in his voice.

But more interesting was the question-and-answer session following his remarks. Three questioners were Japanese war veterans, who used their questions to speak at length about their own experiences in the war. One, a private, said that after the war he was imprisoned in an American camp in the Philippines for suspected war criminals, who were made to carry heavy logs for hours on end, presumably, he thought, as retribution for the Bataan Death March. Another, who said that he had been a guard on the march, tried to explain why it had been so terrible. Too few guards for too many prisoners, he said. A third didn't have a point to make: he just told the audience about his own experience in the war, and told Mr. Tenney that he thought that the Americans fought bravely.

Ultimately Mr. Tenney and his questioners shared something in common: they are all still prisoners of war. More than sixty years later they still carry the war with them. It still occupies their thoughts. It fills them with the urge to talk, to share their stories with strangers. And so it is with war. Wounds heal, but veterans, it seems, carry the experience with them for the rest of their lives, leaving them forever scarred. Even Mr. Tenney, who has, so to speak, made his peace with the war, is still marked by his experience as a soldier and POW; his comrades, some of whom have asked him why he goes to Japan, are even more marked.

And so it is with nations. Nations carry their experiences with war with them, as their members do. As the Japanese veterans last night showed, Japan still carries the war with it. It is still transfigured by the wrenching trauma of the war, because for Japan, World War II is The War. No matter how much Japanese politicians want Japan to become a "normal" nation, Japan will not be decreed into normalcy, not so long as the veterans live on, not so long as some of their children and grandchildren promise to carry on their fight, not so long as the older generation of pacifists, their worldview shaped by experiences on the home front and their commitment to peace enshrined in the constitution, persists in disseminating a view of war that views all conflict through the prism of Japan's war. Japan carries all of that in its collective unconscious, and nothing but time will heal the psychic wounds to the Japanese nation.

Meanwhile, Mr. Tenney's experience also highlights the skeletons in the closet of the US-Japan alliance. He is a living testament to the decision on the part of the US and Japan to leave history be for the sake of the alliance. Indeed, in response to a question, he noted that the US government ordered him and other POWs not to speak about their experiences as POWs in Japan a mere three days after the surrender in Tokyo Bay. The US government has repeatedly intervened to stop attempts by American POWs to sue the Japanese companies that used POWs as slave labor, with the State Department going so far as to serve as a witness for Mitsui in a suit filed by Mr. Tenney.

Such is the lot of men like Mr. Tenney. Abandoned by General MacArthur at Bataan, abandoned by his government when it decided that it needed Japan as an ally, Mr. Tenney was, like soldiers throughout history and (of course) on the Japanese side of the war, at the mercy of power politics and the decisions of distant leaders.

I don't know whether Mr. Tenney will get the audience he desires with Prime Minister Fukuda. I don't know whether he will get an apology from the Japanese government or compensation from Mitsui — or an apology from the US government for that matter. He certainly deserves it. Not only did he don a uniform for his country, not only did he suffer at the hands of the enemy for more than three years, he has carried his experiences with him for more than sixty years.

He and his comrades deserve justice not just from those at whose hands they suffered, but from the governments for whose sake justice has been postponed indefinitely.

The human cost of Hiroshima

The Hoover Institution has published a set of photographs discovered in 1945 by Robert Capp, an American serving in the US occupation force. The photos, taken by an unknown Japanese photographer, show the remains of victims of the bombing of Hiroshima. As Wenran Jiang, professor of political science at the University of Alberta noted at NBR's Japan Forum, "Unlike most photos of the Hiroshima bombing, these dramatically convey the human as well as material destruction unleashed by the atomic bomb."

These photos do not in and of themselves settle the argument on the justness of the bombing of Hiroshima, but they serve as a reminder that no matter how just we think our ends are, we must never allow the pursuit of justice to blind us to the consequences of the means. The death of human beings — of individuals — is an end too, which must not be written off as "collateral damage," an unfortunate byproduct of our pursuit of justice.

The photos can be viewed here.

Recommended Book: In The Ruins of Empire, Ronald Spector

My apologies for not recommending a new book sooner, but blame it on a hectic few weeks in Japanese politics.

This book, though, is well worth reading. A sequel of sorts to Eagle Against the Sun, his account of the Pacific War, Ronald Spector outdoes his earlier effort in providing a comprehensive record of the bloody aftermath of the war in In the Ruins of Empire, a subject that may be as important for understanding Asia today as the war itself.

Spector, a professor of history at George Washington University, focuses on the aftermath of the war in Korea, China, Indochina, and Indonesia and the problems of reconstructing the domestic political orders faced by the US and its allies throughout the region (while trying to get stranded Japanese forces back to Japan).

There are a few points that struck me as particularly relevant. First, the US in 1945 was wholly unprepared for life as a superpower. Responsibility for postwar Asia — China especially — fell into Washington's lap, and for the most part the US government failed to forge a postwar settlement for the region. It was not for want of talent, at least on the spot; indeed, Spector is full of praise for individual OSS agents, military officers, and diplomats who worked with local political leaders and allied counterparts to set up new regimes. The fault, to Spector, was in Washington and other allied capitals, where senior leaders were inept in the face of considerable uncertainty. As he writes in the book's concluding paragraph, "The most deleterious effects of the Allied military presence developed not through blunders or misjudgments of those charged with carrying out the occupations, but when the highest levels of government acted indecisively, had mistaken notions or no notion at all about what was actually happening on the scene, and neglected or ignored reports from the field."

In the first months following the war, the US had no plans for Korea or Indochina, and its plans for China amounted to little more than pushing for a ceasefire between the Guomintang and the Communists, even as it assisted in moving Chiang's forces to northern China and providing Chiang with arms. The strategic vacuum in the early months of the postwar period made it all the more likely that US Asia policy would be viewed solely through the prism of anti-communism as the cold war unfolded. The consequences for US policy in Indochina, Korea, and China up to the present day require no further explanation.

If Washington suffered from a failure of imagination in its postwar Asia policy, the policies of Britain, France, and the Netherlands were almost impervious to the reality on the ground, especially the latter two. It was absurd to think that France and the Netherlands, broken nations reemerging from German occupation, could reassert imperial control over distant colonies whose peoples saw the mystique of the empires crumble as the imperialists were in turn conquered and whose national consciousnesses emerged during the war (not unlike the national movements that followed in the wake of Napoleon's conquests in Europe). The Dutch, lacking sufficient force to reassert control over Indonesia, actually had to rely on the British to do much of their fighting for them. Despite the fact that their empires were on the edge of oblivion, the European empires were determined to restore their empires to their former glory. They failed to appreciate both the political awakening among Asian peoples and their own attenuated statures.

A final interesting thread that ran throughout the book is the variegated roles played by stranded Japanese forces throughout Asia. While waiting to be repatriated to Japan, Japanese forces were present on all sides of the conflicts in the immediate aftermath of the war — in some cases helping to preserve order for the allied powers, in others working with opposition movements.

Spector's book ultimately provides an excellent reminder that history is messier than the textbooks would have us believe. Wars don't end when peace treaties are signed. Especially for wars in the modern period, the end of war presents a whole new set of challenges for the restoration of political and economic order (not to mention the lingering remnants of wartime hatred, which result at least in part from the need to mobilize whole populations and mar postwar relations between former adversaries).

Sympathy for the devils?

A common trope among the Japanese right's apologists, revisionists, and other outright deniers of Japan's wartime crimes is that Japanese imperialism was little different from the European imperialism that had divided up Asia over the centuries — indeed, Japanese imperialism was superior because it had the effect (intended or not) of liberating Asians from the European empires.

This may have been the case in the early years of the Japanese empire, when the Meiji oligarchs who conducted Japanese foreign policy were following lessons learned from the imperial powers. But Japan's imperialism from the 1930s onward (with roots in the immediate aftermath of the Russo-Japanese war) was arguably a different matter entirely. (Perhaps this difference is best illustrated in the differing legacies of Japanese imperialism in Taiwan and Korea.)

Why? In The War of the World, Niall Ferguson provides one explanation:

The new empires of the twentieth century were not content with the somewhat haphazard administrative arrangements that had characterized the old — the messy mixtures of imperial and local law, the delegation of powers as well as status to certain indigenous groups. They inherited from the nineteenth-century nation-builders an insatiable appetite for uniformity; in that sense, they were more like 'empire-states' than empires in the old sense. The new empires repudiated traditional religious and legal constraints on the use of force. They insisted on the creation of new hierarchies in place of existing social structures. They delighted in sweeping away old political institutions. Above all, they made a virtue of ruthlessness. In pursuit of their objectives, they were willing to make war on whole categories of people, at home and abroad, rather than on merely the armed and trained representatives of an identified enemy state. It was entirely typical of the new generation of would-be emperors that Hitler could accuse the British of excessive softness in their treatment of the Indian nationalists.

"Introduction," lxvi

I am not suggesting that I buy this argument entirely, but it's worth keeping in mind the next time a Japanese hyper-nationalist rolls out the argument that Japan was just doing what Britain, France, and Holland were doing.

Sankei pays tribute to the war dead by calling for a more activist Japan

In honor of the day of memorial for the end of the war on August 15, each of Japan's dailies has published an editorial marking the occasion.

They are, in general, fairly innocuous: Yomiuri's discusses history and Yasukuni Shrine, Asahi's looks at relations with Asian neighbors. Sankei's editorial, however, single-handedly illustrates the fundamental incoherence of the Japanese right, which is torn between reverence for the past, recognition of the importance of the US-Japan alliance and the need for Japan to contribute more internationally, and fear that everyone in East Asia is prepared to gang up on Japan — the sum of the "psychic whiplash" that Japan suffered in the rapid shift from total war to total defeat, occupation, and alliance with the victorious with the US (and now, on top of all this, China becoming a world-beating superpower).

After an opening section that talks of the sacrifices made by Japan's war dead for the Japanese people, Sankei launches into the following bizarre rant:

The US-Japan relationship, whose deepening is desired

It is deplorable that although Japan's international environment is becoming rather intense, foreign and security policy issues did not become a point of contention whatsoever in the latest House of Councillors election.

North Korea, which is chasing the two hares of recognition as a nuclear power and the acquisition of aid; China, which is feverishly following the path of a military and economic great power and neglecting the environment and food security; and Russia, which is pushing forward with energy imperialism in the background based on petroleum power: This is, without exaggeration, the appearance of our neighboring countries.

For this reason and more, the US-Japan relationship, which must be strengthened, is also increasingly creaky.

In regard to the six-party talks and America's giving in to the North without limit, it is naturally felt in Japan as an act of betrayal. As for the successive inappropriate incidents of former Defense Minister Kyuma Fumio's the atomic bombings "couldn't be helped" statement and the US Congress's adoption of the comfort women resolution, they have, as a result, given rise to deep distrust and disappointment in the US in the hearts of many Japanese, who have consequently perceived the inner workings of the relationship.

On the other hand, the fate of the anti-terror special measures law, because of the opposition's taking control of a majority in the Upper House, has become opaque in a stroke.

The MSDF's activities in the Indian Ocean being conducted for eleven countries is not simply "cooperation with the US," much less "following the US." It's international cooperation. If this law is buried, the separation between the international community, which is continuing the war on terrorism, and Japan will widen, and the loss of confidence will be immeasurable.

Japan, even while contributing $13 billion during the Gulf War, was not thanked — "too little, too late" — and thus must not commit the same foolish diplomatic mistake.

August 15 sixty-two years ago was a historical turning point for Japan equal to the Meiji Restoration. Japan followed the rare progression from America's enemy to its ally. Of course this began by way of the coercion of the occupation, and henceforth there was also tension and friction in economics, security, and other aspects of the relationship.

深化させたい日米関係

　日本の国際環境はむしろ厳しさを増しているのに、今回の参院選で外交・安全保障がほとんど争点にならなかったのは残念なことだった。

　核保有の既成事実化と支援獲得の二兎（にと）を追う北朝鮮、環境や食の安全を放置して軍事・経済大国路線をひた走る中国、そして石油パワーを背景に資源帝国主義を突き進むロシア。わが近隣諸国の掛け値なしの姿である。

　だからこそ一層、深化させねばならない日米関係にもきしみが走る。

　 ６カ国協議における米国の北への際限ない妥協は、日本には背信行為も同然に映る。下院本会議での慰安婦決議採択と久間章生前防衛相の原爆投下「しょうがな い」発言という相次ぐ不適切な出来事は、機微に触れるがゆえに、結果的に多くの日本人の心の奥深くに米国への失望と不信を生んだ。

　一方、対テロ特別措置法の命運は、野党が参議院で過半数を制したことにより一気に不透明になった。

　インド洋での海上自衛隊の活動は１１カ国に対して行われており、単なる「対米協力」ではない。ましてや「対米追随」ではない。国際協力なのだ。もし同法が葬られれば、テロとの戦いをつづける国際社会と日本の乖離（かいり）は広がり、信頼の損失は計り知れない。

　日本は、１３０億ドルを拠出しながら「少なすぎて遅すぎる」と感謝すらされなかった、湾岸戦争の外交的失敗を繰り返す愚を犯してはならない。

　６２年前の８月１５日は日本にとって明治維新にも匹敵する歴史の転換点だった。日本は米国を「敵」から「同盟」の相手とする稀有（けう）な歩みをつづけた。もちろんそれは占領という強制により始まり、その後も経済や防衛など数々の局面で摩擦や緊張はあった。

What can we learn from Sankei's publishing this on the anniversary of Japan's surrender to the allied powers? Japanese (ultra)nationalists, while recognizing that the alliance with the US is essential for Japan's exercising influence internationally, also chafe at perceived American slights against the Japan and apparently continue to suffer from the shock of Japan's rapid shift at war's end sixty years later.

Now, I am sympathetic to the idea that Japan has yet to heal fully from the wounds inflicted from moving from total war with the US to total dependence on the US, and I think it's an important factor in explaining the underlying tension in the relationship that continues to the present day.

What I reject is the cynicism (and the lack of humility). To me, this editorial's argument seems to say little more than "We cannot trust the Americans — and don't particularly like them — but we have no choice but to stay close to them if we're going to be able to deal with our nasty neighbors." Sankei is wholly unapologetic and not the least bit humbled by the defeat of Japanese imperialism that August 15th signifies. Sure, they take care to emphasize that Japan is engaged in international cooperation, but there is no question that Sankei is far more concerned about North Korea and China when it looks at contemporary Japanese security policy. It is ready for Japan to reenter the East Asian balance of power in a big way. Sankei has learned nothing from the war, perhaps except for the lesson that Japan should be more prepared this time around.

Meanwhile, while the editorial asserts that the US-Japan alliance "must" be strengthened, there is little to suggest what exactly that means (although I would guess it starts with abstaining from any criticism of Japan's wartime past and taking care to follow Japan's instructions in the six-party talks). The nationalists like those at Sankei — and, dare I say, at the Kantei — will ride the US train as long as it has locomotive power, but does anyone anticipate that Japan will value the alliance when the US is bruised, battered, and seemingly down for the count? (Such arguments have been cropping up ever more frequently in the pages of Japan's newspapers and journals.) Again, this need not be a problem — no alliance is permanent. But that makes the embrace of shared, universal values on the part of the Abes and Asos disingenuous and more than a little tawdry.

This is, I fear, the face of the men who govern Japan today. Free of humility, free of sorrow, free of regret, they see "uncertainty" — that ubiquitous word — in Asia and are immediately prepared to send Japan into battle again. Japan, of course, is by no means going to resurrect its co-prosperity sphere, and the practical consequences of this position, short of dangerously aggravating tension in the US-Japan relationship, will likely be small, but the persistence of this manner of thinking will in the long run make it harder for Japan to play a constructive role in upholding the global order, if only because every step taken by these nationalists will prompt a backlash at home and among Japan's neighbors (more specifically, the Korean and Chinese peoples).

The reality is that Japan will not be able to act in the world free of the shadow of the past until the leaders making the strategic decisions are sufficiently apologetic and humbled by their country's past. There is no way around it. There are no shortcuts. Repeating the same apology, word for word, over and over again, does not constitute atonement. Until that changes, otherwise innocuous gestures like refueling coalition vessels in the Indian Ocean will be tarnished (fairly or not) in the eyes of Japan's Northeast Asian neighbors and many Japanese citizens as indicative of the first steps in the grand designs of the ultranationalists.

Another August 6, the dilemma remains

Today is the sixty-second anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, an event that has perhaps more political significance than usual given the recent resignation of former Defense Minister Kyuma Fumio over comments in which he referred to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as "inevitable," as well as last autumn's debate (or non-debate, since it was one-sided) over having a debate on the acquisition of nuclear weapons.

As usual, the anniversary is being marked with a ceremony in Hiroshima and calls for the total abolition of nuclear weapons.

I find Yomiuri's editorial marking the occasion particularly useful, because it cuts to the heart of the nuclear "dilemma" for Japan. "We cannot approve the atomic bombings," says Yomiuri. "On the other, Japan has no choice but to depend on US nuclear deterrent power for our national security. This is the 'dilemma' that postwar Japan continues to shoulder." It is for this reason that it is not entirely appropriate for Japan to ask for an apology from the US. While it is not unreasonable for the US to express its remorse for its actions, however necessary they were or seemed at the time, it is inappropriate for Japan to demand an apology from the US at the same time that its security rests on US extended deterrence.

Raymond Aron's comments on this question are useful to consult. In The Imperial Republic (included in this recent anthology), Aron began from the recognition that "the decision to use both atomic bombs arose almost inevitably out of the circumstances." But he continues,

But that does not mean to say that American diplomacy was exemplary or rational. Five years later, the United States was asking Japan to take up again the arms it had made its vanquished enemy renounce forever. The United States had itself created the circumstances in which recourse to atomic bombs was almost inevitable: the demand for unconditional surrender; the decision to 'reform,' 'regenerate,' and democratize Japan; the timidity of some leaders, far-sighted though they might have been; the crusading language that made even secret negotiations no longer possible; and the hasty judgment of some of the government's military advisers who, thinking invasion was the only way of achieving US political purposes, had persuaded Roosevelt to ask for Soviet support and to pay for it with concessions made at China's expense.

This is an important reminder that even if the bombings were inevitable to save US and Japanese lives, even if they ended the war, Americans cannot, must not approach the bombings with a clean conscience. The Second World War will forever be a stain upon human history, and every nation that participated — Axis and Allies alike — emerged from the war with bloody hands. That is not to excuse the horrendous crimes of the Axis powers. Rather, it should serve as a cautionary lesson for those who believe that they are acting with the best of intentions: do good intentions (the defeat of Imperial Japan) justify any and all means (the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Japan, the fire bombings of Tokyo and other cities)? If so, where does that reasoning end? And who is the arbiter of good intentions? I don't think there are simple answers to these questions, and as the history becomes increasingly distant, the only appropriate stance should be humility and an emphasis on the constant need to remember.

Indeed, perhaps an appropriate step for the US to have taken after passing H.Res. 121 would be to send a representative to Hiroshima, suggesting that even the US has some thinking to do about the war.

Meanwhile, the persistence of Japan's nuclear dilemma points to an important reality of foreign policy change in Japan. The reason for the dilemma in the first place is that Japanese foreign policy has, since the Meiji Restoration, been driven by pragmatic conservative elites formulating Japanese foreign policy often in opposition to idealists of the conservative, liberal, or pacifist persuasion. Japan's reliance on the US nuclear umbrella is a product of the Yoshida doctrine, despite the pacifist left's outright rejection of nuclear arms and the ultra-nationalist right's desire for an independent nuclear deterrent, the latter two positions, of course, presenting solutions to Japan's nuclear cognitive dissonance.

But here we are, in 2007, and Japan still depends on the US nuclear deterrent — as reiterated by Condoleeza Rice on her visit to Tokyo last autumn. And, as convincingly argued by Llewelyn Hughes in the spring issue of International Security, there is little reason to think that Japan will choose to develop an independent deterrent anytime soon; in the absence of such a decision, it is wholly unlikely that Japan will reject the US umbrella with a nuclear or semi-nuclear North Korea next door.

Another sign of lingering Japanese war guilt

Following yesterday's finding that a plurality of respondents indicated that Japan still needs to apologize for its actions during the war, I have found, thanks to a tip from a trusted correspondent, a survey conducted by Fuji TV'sHodo 2001" program in April that suggests that the Japanese people are far from defiant when it comes to making amends for Japan's wartime crimes.

If readers go to the Hodo 2001 site's public opinion survey archive and scroll down to the poll from 8 April, they will find an opinion poll that shows that the Japanese people are not exactly rallying behind The Facts brigade (and let's not forget the honorary representative from the English-language blogosphere).

The third question in the survey asked, "Regarding the comfort women issue, do you think that Japan has apologized sufficiently?" 43.8% answered no, 37.2% answered yes. (Beyond that, a majority answered "no" to the question asking whether Prime Minister Abe should pray at Yasukuni.)

At the same time, the survey found that 59% of respondents "cannot understand" the repeated criticism by Chinese and South Korean leaders of the various statements made by Japanese politicians about history problems, which goes to show, I think, that historical reconciliation begins at home; there is a limit to what efforts to improve acceptance of past crimes emanating from outside Japan can achieve, which is not to say that others should abstain from good-faith criticism of the revisionists, relativists, and deniers, but it must be done with the knowledge that ultimately the Japanese people have to do the job themselves.

Don't panic

Pollster Karlyn Bowman, writing at American.com, presents data on Japanese public opinion drawn from a variety of recent surveys (mostly old Pew Global Attitudes polls).

The overall picture — Japanese are generally pleased with relations with the US, displeased about the rise of China — is not altogether surprising, although some findings were unexpected.

First, in response to the question "Do you believe globalization, especially the increasing connection of our economy with others around the world, is...," 92% of respondents said it was "mostly good for Japan" and only 8% "mostly bad." In comparison, only 60% of Americans respondents said it was "mostly good" for the US, with 35% saying "mostly bad." I suspect that this discrepancy says more about the comparative intensity of globalization in the US and Japan than about what Japanese people actually think about globalization. After all, when it comes to things like, say, foreign direct investment in the form of foreign ownership of Japanese firms, the Japanese don't seem all that thrilled about the greater economic openness that globalization entails. Accordingly, if and when Japan actually globalizes, I would expect more Japanese to feel that it is "mostly bad."

Second, asked whether "Japan has apologized sufficiently for its military actions in the 1930s and 1940s," 44% of respondents said "has not," 40% said "has." Hey, Ampontan, look: even Japanese think that Japan has more apologizing to do. Perhaps Congress is not altogether out of line — and not just engaging in "vainglorious moral preening" — in asking for another Japanese apology.

Admittedly, these poll numbers aren't the freshest, and I have to imagine there would be some changes in light of recent events. Nevertheless, they show that basically, fundamentally, relations between the US and Japan are sound, whatever temporary vacillations come along.

Please explain, ambassador

Ambassador Kato Ryozo, facing the passage of the non-binding comfort women resolution by the House of Representatives, has reportedly sent a "blunt" letter to the House leadership warning about "lasting and harmful effects on the deep friendship, close trust and wide-ranging cooperation our two nations now enjoy."

(The Washington Post article breaking the story does not note whether he explained what harmful effects he foresees. If anyone has the text of this letter, or knows where to find it, I would be much obliged.)

Assuming that Ambassador Kato has not added any details to his dire warnings about how this resolution will harm the US-Japan relationship, I renew the question I asked when Ambassador Kato tried to scare the House Foreign Affairs Committee into voting against the resolution: is that a prediction or a threat?

As I noted then, Americans, public and elite alike, are generally sanguine about the state of the US-Japan relationship, and US elites seem to have no problem separating this thorny historical issue from the relationship. So it seems that if there is to be trouble after the passage of this resolution, it will not be emanating from the US. That leaves Japan.

So, Ambassador Kato, which is it? Are you warning that the Japanese government considers this an unfriendly act and will respond in kind? Or are you warning that it will inflame Japanese public opinion and undermine public support for the US-Japan relationship? Both are manageable, indeed, avoidable, if only Tokyo were capable of some perspective on this issue, instead of immediately becoming defensive, attempting to squash the resolution by whatever means necessary, and making dire predictions about worsening US-Japan relations (it must be the fault of those Democrats in Congress!).

Whatever the case may be, if there is one lesson that Americans should draw from this episode, in combination with the Kyuma affair, it is that clearly the US-Japan relationship has a long way to go before it can be called "normal" — and that there are plenty of history issues between the US and Japan that have yet to be properly confronted.

More sorrow, more pity

The International Herald Tribune published a long review by Bernard-Henri Lévy of newly elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy's campaign book Testimony, recently translated into English.

Lévy notes that one of the Sarkozy's leitmotifs is a reassessment of twentieth century French history that dwells less on moments of national disaster and tragedy, enables the French people to once again feel proud of their nation, and enables France to play a prominent role as a leading Western power.

Frankly, I am not against the idea of political leaders and citizens speaking about the sadness, the pity, even the horror they feel when examining some of the blackest pages of their national history. In other words, I think that shame is quite useful in politics, and the idea of not feeling, as Emmanuel Levinas said, "accountable for" or even "hostage to" the crimes we did not commit, and even worse, not feeling accountable and responsible for those in which we or ours have had some part — I think this is exactly what Sartre (him again!) called a politics of "bastards." Where would the United States be if it were not ashamed of its past of slavery, then of racism? Where would France be if — under the pretext that, as Sarkozy says, we have not "produced" a Hitler (true) or Stalin (unclear, given how much the French intelligentsia participated in the creation of the Stalinist vulgate) or Pol Pot (rather doubtful, given that Pol Pot and his men all trained in Paris, in the very cradle of human rights) — we were simply to sing together the sinister "proud to be French" refrain the new president keeps humming, which amounts to finessing, for example, the enormous anti-Semitism of the Dreyfus era, or the huge collaborationist enthusiasm of the cultural and administrative elite in the darkest Vichy years, or the practice of state-sanctioned torture in the last years of the war in Algeria?

I could not help but read this passage and think of a certain Japanese prime minister with a penchant for recasting Japanese history in a way that enables Japan to be proud again, to stand as a great power without having to fuss about with all that history.

To "modernizers" like Sarkozy and Abe (for Francophones, I find this article hints at a similarities between their domestic agendas), the past is an inconvenience, an obstacle standing in the way of their nations' return to glory. And yet both France and Japan, at least in terms of their wartime pasts, could stand for more openness, more reflection on the "blackest pages of their national history." France, arguably, has come along further, but in some way, the manner in which both have dealt with the war has been affected by a sense of victimhood that both countries took from the war, France from the experience of spending the war occupied and divided as part of Hitler's New Order, Japan from its experience of its cities being leveled by conventional and nuclear bombs, followed by the trauma of surrender and occupation. (This may be one way to watch Alain Resnais' Hiroshima Mon Amour.)

I have no truck with those like Ampontan, this blogger's favorite foil, who are convinced that Japan is plenty open as far as its past is concerned, that it has apologized and repented and reflected enough. The problem is not denial, but rather the revision and obfuscation of facts that others are struggling to make clear not just for the present, but for all time. We should not want future generations to be unburdened of what happened during the twentieth century — precisely the opposite. No generation henceforth should be allowed to "forget" the twentieth century. The twentieth century was perhaps the worst in human history. If it means that countries have to revisit their "dark pages" repeatedly, what of it?

How long before feelings of victimhood fade and the Japanese people can, to borrow from an anecdote including in the Ampontan post above, scratch beneath the blacked out ink of the wartime past look face to face with Imperial Japan's crimes — without the litany of excuses that taint so many discussions of the war (the US victimized us too, the Tokyo tribunal was illegitimate, the European powers did it first, and so on)?

And so the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly is right to censure the Japanese government for instructing textbook publishers to play down the Imperial Army's role in ordering mass civilian suicides in Okinawa. And so the US Congress is right to pass a mere "Sense of the Congress" resolution demanding that Japan acknowledge and apologize for its military's sexual enslavement of civilians. No Ampontan, it is not "preening," "ugly," or "gutless." It is a simple act, incumbent on all, to remember the twentieth century and to see that others do the same. It is for the same reason that I did not dismiss out of hand Ozawa Ichiro's call for a US apology for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No country is free from having to reflect.

I will not break out the Santayana cliche about repeating history, because I do not think the doom of the twentieth century (the clash of technologically advanced nation-states) will be the doom of our century; the lesson of the twentieth century, rather, is that anyone is capable of barbarity against one's fellow human beings, those inflamed by ideology doubly so. All peoples need to reflect upon that, and all governments ought to facilitate reflection by their peoples.

And so I too, like Lévy, am dubious about leaders who are in a hurry to fast forward through the brutal moments of their nations' histories and skip straight to the good parts. This applies as much to events within nations as between them, as Lévy notes. Why did the twentieth century happen as it did? Scholars, schoolchildren, statesmen: all ought to spend the twenty-first century reflecting upon that.

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.

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?