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COMMENTARY
Koizumi's flawed
nationalism
By Kaneko Masaru
(Republished with permission from Japan Focus)
Throughout April, many Japanese expressed
irritation at what they perceived as China's
endless demands for apologies. The bulk of
Japanese conservative opinion in particular
claimed that no matter how many times Japan
apologizes, demands for more arise. A second
argument popular on the right was that the Chinese
government uses the Japan issue politically. For
example, some insist that Japan is being
scapegoated in order to detract attention from
China's domestic tensions.
But looking at
the issue from the Chinese perspective, matters
appear a good deal different. The Chinese see a
striking lack of consistency. Certainly they have
heard apologies from Japan, and they heard one
again on April 22 when Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi recycled former premier Murayama
Tomiichi's August 15, 1995, expression of "deep
remorse" for colonization and wartime atrocities.
But along with these periodic apologies
there have been a stream of such profoundly
contradictory actions as Koizumi's
politically-driven visits to Yasukuni Shrine,
textbook revisionism, and renewed Japanese claims
to the Senkaku/Diaoyutai Islands. Think about
these kinds of actions in comparative terms. What
if Germany's Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder suddenly
paid a visit to a Nazi cemetery? His political
base would cave in and there'd be an uproar in
Europe and beyond. But in Japan, under this
present leadership, the sense of responsibility
toward neighboring and formerly colonized
countries is weak.
Koizumi's apology does
nothing to settle the core issues, and indeed
China immediately replied with a demand for
concrete actions. Small wonder. Not only did 80
members of parliament visit Yasukuni before
Koizumi spoke, but he himself later refused to say
whether or not he would visit the shrine in the
future. To curry favor with the right, Koizumi has
long practiced a US President George W Bush style
of performative politics (recall the "Mission
Accomplished" speech from the aircraft carrier USS
Abraham Lincoln)by announcing that he intends to
visit Yasukuni on August 15, the anniversary of
Japan's surrender. Protests from China and Korea
forced him to revise that plan and visit Yasukuni
on a different day. But they have not curbed his
desire to visit, so little has changed. Koizumi's
unprincipled behavior is almost certain to
continue and aggravate tensions between the two
countries.
There is, of course, plenty of
disaffection with the short-sightedness of the
Koizumi regime. But when people do speak up, they
are quickly bullied into silence. We saw this in
the case of Keizai Doyukai (Japan Association of
Corporate Executives) former head Kobayashi
Yotaro, chairman of Fuji Xerox. Last November, he
publicly called on the prime minister not to visit
Yasukuni, arguing that it was creating
difficulties for Japanese firms. He was not, in
other words, making an argument about the need to
face up to history or anything like that. He was
speaking from the very narrow and self-interested
position of keeping the focus on the bottom line.
Yet incredibly, even that was too much, as the
right-wing sound trucks were sent around to
Kobayashi's house. More recently, Molotov
cocktails were hurled into his yard. There may be
- indeed, there probably are - informal requests
from the business community to be careful with the
China relationship, but even prominent figures
don't dare speak openly on the issue.
The
Koizumi regime is led by holdovers from the Cold
War who seem incapable of grasping how profoundly
the world around them has changed. Here we are
with political and economic linkages exploding
throughout Asia. Even in the case of Japan, trade
ties to China are now more important than those
with any other nation. Yet at the same time,
Japan's leadership is placing its bets on sticking
as close to the Bush administration as possible
and has no problem dissing its neighbors. The
Koizumi regime reveals no indication of having
seriously debated the country's appropriate
foreign policy stance in light of the realities of
the Asian political economy and social and
political changes sweeping he region.
Kobayashi's warning showed us that even at
the narrowest edge of self-interested calculation,
the Koizumi administration is making a mess of
policy. But this mess is imposing far greater
economic costs than merely some lost sales for the
corporate community. Asia is in the midst of a
boom centered on China's extraordinary level of
investment in infrastructure. Japanese firms are
selling a lot of equipment to China and building
their own factories there. But Japan is not
getting the most lucrative "operating system"
deals. These include, for example, constructing
the high-speed train linking Beijing and Shanghai,
and providing portable-phone systems, computing
systems and other technologies. These technologies
will determine the outline of China's development
and thus create openings for continuing sales from
the European and American firms that won the
deals.
Nor do the costs stop there.
Consider the ineptness of Economy, Trade and
Industry Minister Nakagawa Shoichi. He's an
extremist from the Kamei faction, and long
associated with textbook controversies and other
right-wing hobby-horses. Nakagawa had offers from
the Chinese for cooperative development of
offshore natural gas reserves, investment in
pipelines, and so on, but turned them down. China
lacks the technology to exploit its offshore
reserves efficiently. Cooperation between Japan
and China on energy projects is a sensible policy,
a win-win initiative that would foster stronger
ties and regional stability. But Nakagawa and the
others in charge didn't see it that way. Their
incompetence is so gross that watching it unfold
is a little like viewing a horror movie where a
multi-headed monster thrashes around a lot,
scaring everyone, but can't get its act together
and move forward.
As for the argument that
China is using nationalism, that is certainly
rich. Japanese conservatives frequently used
nationalism in this country's post-war
relationship with the US. Recall how ready an
earlier generation of leaders was to claim that
Japan could not take on a bigger defense role for
fear of antagonizing the popular forces that
opposed the US-Japan Security Treaty (AMPO).
Moreover, national identity arguments here have
long been rooted in Japan's success at avoiding
falling prey to colonial rule. That such "national
identity" ideas should have strong roles
domestically and at the level of foreign policy is
hardly unusual. In fact, for governments to seek
legitimacy through success in withstanding
colonialism (or, in Japan's Liberal Democratic
Party (LDP), at presiding over high-speed growth)
is standard practice everywhere. It is thus to
some extent understandable that the Chinese state
should stress the country's anti-colonial struggle
in its education. Here we see how the side that
inflicted suffering easily forgets, while the side
that experienced it does not. China's behavior is
thus not alienating it from the rest of the world
- as is often claimed - because it is largely
doing what others, including Japan, do and have
done.
The main problem here is the way the
Koizumi regime has responded to China. Rather than
responding with emotionalism, they ought to have
approached the challenge with cooler, more
realistic heads.
Underlying these
disturbing trends are the Koizumi regime's
intellectual limitations, of course, but what has
allowed this incompetence to run riot is the lack
of countervailing power within the LDP itself. The
imbalance in the LDP is due to the weakness of the
Keynesian conservatives and the old Miyazawa
faction. These groups are hardly an ideal
opposition, but at least on the foreign policy
front they were relatively liberal and
pacifist-oriented and had long-established ties to
neighboring Asian countries. When their leaders
went up against Koizumi's "structural reforms,"
their heads rolled one by one. So now you have the
dominance of neo-nationalist restorationists cum
market fundamentalists, in parallel with the
religiosity and market fundamentalism of the Bush
regime. The lack of powerful critical voices
within the LDP on the foreign-policy front is a
genuine crisis.
As to the future, the more
the Koizumi regime copies the Bushites and
alienates this country from Asia, the worse the
tensions will grow. The Taiwan issue and the
uncertain fate of the China bubble among other
challenges give ample reason for concern. One of
the great ironies in all this is that the Koizumi
people prate endlessly about national interests
even as they ignore Japan's real national interest
in strengthening Asian ties and promoting regional
stability. Another is that the US has better
options for recovering from its present dismal
leadership and forging stronger bonds with China,
as the Americans are more welcome and useful in
the China market.
Koizumi has clearly
learned nothing from recent events, but is almost
certainly going to remain prime minister until
September of next year. Nor is there much prospect
of better leadership arising afterwards. So for
the time being, Japan's policymaking elite is
likely to continue squandering the country's
chances of forging a cooperative and stable
relationship with China. The costs of this idiocy
- to be blunt - are incalculable.
Kaneko Masaru is a professor in
Keio University's Faculty of Economics. He
prepared this contribution for Japan Focus.
(Copyright 2005 JapanFocus.org)
(Republished with permission from Japan Focus) |
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