Page 4 of
5 CHINA AND THE
US Part 11: Japan's strategy to
be a 'beautiful nation' By Henry C K Liu
lower house of the Diet, the
House of Representatives, in elections that
November 9.
Having campaigned on a
platform of privatization of public services and
utilities, pension reforms and the deployment of
SDF troops to Iraq, the LDP lost 10 seats,
retaining just 237 in the 480-seat lower house.
Having lost its majority, the LDP once again had
to rely on coalition partners: the pacifist
Buddhist New Komeito
Party, which won 34 seats,
and the right-wing nationalist New Conservative
Party, which won four. After the poll, three
independents joined the LDP, giving the ruling
coalition a total of 278 seats, down from its
pre-election total of 286.
The Democratic
Party of Japan (DPJ) won 40 seats to reach 177 on
a platform opposing the dispatch of SDF troops to
Iraq. Its success led several commentators to
conclude, somewhat prematurely, that Japan had
moved into a new political age, with a genuine
multiparty political system after a half-century
of one-party rule by the LDP. Voter turnout
dropped 3% from the 2000 election to 60%,
reflecting public apathy toward politics and
frustration with a stagnant economy and job cuts,
increased taxes to finance corporate bailouts
while neglecting underfunded pension and health
system. The political left, never very strong
since its exhaustive purge by the US occupation,
was a big loser, with the Social Democratic Party
reduced to six seats from 18, and the Communist
Party losing 11 of its 20 seats.
The DPJ
opposition to the revival of militarism and to the
deployment of troops to Iraq was technical,
arguing that Japanese troops should only be sent
to Iraq under the framework of the United Nations,
not under conditions where the US military still
controlled the country. This position reflects the
view of the ruling circles that Japan's interests
in the Middle East, above all its dependence on
oil from the region, are not served by domination
of the Middle East by the US and Britain, which
ironically reinforces the need of an independent
Japanese military.
Makiko
Tanaka A significant development in
Japanese politics was the election of independent
candidate Makiko Tanaka, the former and first
female foreign minister from April 2001 to January
2002 in the Koizumi administration.
Daughter of former prime minister Kakuei
Tanaka, who, following Nixon, re-established
diplomatic relations with China, Ms Tanaka ran in
Niigata No 5 District after she was fired from the
cabinet for making remarks critical of the prime
minister. Kicked out of the ruling LDP and barred
from party membership for two years, she ran as an
independent and defeated the incumbent LDP
candidate who had taken over her seat when she
resigned from the Diet over some minor scandal on
which she was later exonerated. After a four-month
political absence, she made a political comeback
on an ideological alignment with "like-minded
lawmakers". As foreign minister, she had achieved
international notoriety when she referred to
George W Bush as "totally an asshole" during a
visit to her old private high school near
Philadelphia in 2001.
Tanaka, who
contributed to Koizumi's rapid rise to prominence
and popularity and who shares his neo-liberal
economic-reform agenda, was removed as foreign
minister as differences began to emerge over
Japan's unquestioning alliance with the US. Tanaka
is representative of a political faction that sees
Japan's future as being bound up with closer
relations with China and other Asian nations,
where Japan has large and growing investments and
important trade relations on top of close cultural
affinity.
The Buddhist New Komeito Party,
a pacifist organization that represents the "weak
and underrepresented" in society, opposes the
deployment of SDF troops to Iraq as well as
further amendments and revisions to Japan's
pacifist constitution. It also aims to protect
small business and the working class from adverse
impacts from of further economic restructuring
advocated by Koizumi and Tanaka.
Shinzo
Abe Last September 26, Shinzo Abe, the
newly elected president of the LDP, became at 52
the youngest postwar prime minister of Japan,
after winning 66%, or 464, of the 703 votes from
LDP lawmakers. On January 10, Abe upgraded the
Defense Agency to full ministry status for the
first time since Japan's defeat in World War II,
as a part of his push to reclaim a full role for
Japan in world affairs as a major power. Though
largely symbolic, the change gives the military
establishment greater budgetary and policy powers
and greater prestige, even if not respectability.
As Japan's 90th prime minister, Abe is the
country's first leader born after World War II.
Facing tense diplomatic stress, Abe began his
premiership with an urgent task of mending ties
with Japan's Asian neighbors. In October he paid
"ice-breaking" visits to China, with which no
top-level visit from Japan had taken place since
2001, and to South Korea, signaling a new approach
in foreign policy to break diplomatic deadlocks
with Beijing and Seoul left by his predecessor
Koizumi. Abe hopes his new approach will not only
serve Japan's national interests, but will lead to
improved stability in Northeast Asia.
Abe
carries a personal burden of a sensitive heritage.
Under postwar US occupation, his maternal
grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, was initially
condemned as a war criminal for his role as a high
official overseeing the Japanese puppet regime in
Manchuria and a minister in the wartime cabinet of
prime minister Hideki Tojo. Kishi was nevertheless
rehabilitated to meet the US need for conservative
politicians to keep the increasingly popular left
in check in postwar Japanese politics. He rose
quickly to prominence in the LDP and became prime
minister in 1957.
In 1960, Kishi pushed
through the renewal of the US-Japan Security
Treaty amid massive public protests. Anti-US
demonstrations became so intense that White House
press secretary James Hagerty, in Japan to prepare
for a presidential visit, had to move about by
helicopter to avoid protesters on the ground.
President Dwight Eisenhower had to cancel his
planned trip to Japan and Kishi himself eventually
had to resign. But the treaty survived.
Abe's great-uncle, Eisaku Sato, Kishi's
brother, was prime minister from 1964 to 1972.
Abe's own father, Shintaro, also a leading LDP
politician, had been slated to become prime
minister when he died suddenly in 1991. Abe had
left his job as an executive with Kobe Steel to
become his father's secretary after Shintaro's
appointment as foreign minister in 1982. After
Shintaro's death, Abe took over his father's seat
in parliament representing Yamaguchi prefecture.
Abe's family political heritage goes back
to the Meiji Restoration of 1868. His Yamaguchi
prefecture was the base of the powerful Choshu
clan that joined with elements of the rising
bourgeoisie to overthrow the feudal shogunate and
restore the Meiji Emperor as a central authority
who modernized Japan on the model of the British
Empire.
While the US-imposed post-World
War II constitution formally established Japan as
a constitutional monarchy, right-wing elements of
the Japanese establishment continue to regard the
emperor as the revered symbol of
ultra-nationalism, patriotism and militarism in
the land of samurai culture, notwithstanding that
the Meiji Restoration demolished the feudal
Samurai cult and co-opted its surviving members
and values into industry, business, government and
the military in the service of the emperor.
Impact of Westernization of
Japan Notwithstanding the historical image
of the Meiji Restoration as a modernization
movement, policy conflicts persisted throughout
the Meiji period over how much Japan should
emulate or borrow from the West. Opinion was
divided between kaikoku (open the country)
and joi (expel the barbarians) after US
Navy Commodore Oliver Perry landed in 1853.
While tensions continued throughout the
Meiji period regarding Japan's policy toward
foreigners among politicians and alien ideas among
intellectuals, the Japanese masses went from
xenophobia to xenophilia, seduced by crass Western
mannerism and low
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