It's hot in here... and why am I in this handbasket?
I know that quite a few of you are better versed in Japanese politics and history than I am - I ran across something this morning that I don't really understand. According to the BBC article here, we're basically trying to bribe Japan to give up Article Nine of their Constitution with hopes of a seat on the UN Security Council
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Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. 2) In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.
The current constitution was more or less handed to the Japanese by SCAP (Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, the occupation authority headed by MacArthur) after being drafted by a body of both military and civilian personnel. The original idea had been to have the Japanese take the older Meiji Constitution and revise it themselves, deleting the elements which had allowed for the steady militarization of Japan in the first half of the twentieth century. The Japanese more or less handed the exact same piece of paper back to SCAP, which SCAP felt to be insufficient. Feeling it within their authority, and anticipating that the Japanese themselves would not change the Meiji constitution to the degree desired, MacArthur had his staff produce the document we now have today (there have been no amendments to the constitution of Japanese since its ratification). When first released to the public, the story was that the Japanese government, with significant input from the emperor and having the boundaries set by SCAP, had created it. The story was later dropped for the truth.
The wording of Article 9 was particularly problematic due to the fact that it seemed to disallow any national defense of Japan. Japan’s immediate neighbors (and even nations as far south as the Philippines and Indonesia) were much happier with the idea of a toothless Japan; perhaps because of the fact that at that time, there were still members of the Japanese government that argued the Pacific War *was* a war of national defense (you’ll find some of the same types still around now). Earlier drafts of the constitution included a specific prohibition against even purely defensive forces, but these were later removed before the final draft, creating the ambiguity which was later seized upon by the US during the Cold War era.
Starting in the fifties and sixties, there was a period known as the Reverse Course, where basically the US began to backpedal (and encouraging Japan to do the same) in the interests of its war on Communism. Arguments were made that the Japanese should take up the burden of defending themselves (or at the very least, share in it), and you got the Japanese Self-Defense Forces, which were established in 1954 (the Japan-America Mutual Defense Treaty was ratified in 1952, with a second in 1960).
The JSDF is currently one of the world’s most technologically advanced military forces, and numbers some 240,000 men total. [Anecdotally, however, I hear stories of how ridiculous they actually seem when seen doing drills.] As of 1994, Japan ranked seventh in the world for defense expenditure, following the US, Russia, China, France, the UK and Germany. In that fiscal year, 4.7 trillion yen (roughly 47 billion dollars US at current exchange rates) was spent on defense, and been increasing at a rate of roughly 1% a year for some time before that (though the current economic situation probably has frozen this growth since that time). Thus, at the very least theoretically, Japan has a capable military force which could take part in UN peacekeeping missions, etc. Which is certainly important, as they have been eyeing a seat on the Defense Council for some time.
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As to why the Japanese overwhelmingly accepted the constitution in general and Article 9 in particular, there’s a few explanations. Historian John Dower (author of “Embracing Defeat”) argues that Article 9 in particular was a sort of way out for the Japanese people following the war (Ben could tell you more about this than myself, I think). With their past so heavily marred with a militaristic imperialist jaunt across most of Asia, which only ended in their own ruin, there wasn’t much in the immediate past to hold to as a source of national pride. Thus, national pride was at least partially situated in terms of the present and future, wherein the Japanese people could work to promote world peace through their own example. Certainly, by that point in time, the ordinary Japanese citizens had seen their fair share of the wages of war and empire.
By the end of the war daily rations for citizens had fallen to as little as 800 to 500 calories a day, most metalwork products (pots, pans, even temple paraphernalia) were collected for war material, and the populace had been armed, sometimes with as little as wooden or bamboo spears, to fight to the last man, woman, and child (schools had been mobilized into the war effort starting in the early 1940s) against the anticipated mainland invasion (averted by the deployment of the atomic bombs). [Go google Ketsu-go or Operation Olympic if interested in the details and projections of what a mainland invasion would have looked like.] The average citizen certainly had taken enough by that point, and could realize this now that the indoctrination and media control were no longer in effect and there had been enough time to see that the promised horrors of the invading armies were propaganda engineered by the Japanese government to keep them in line with the war effort.
The governing body wasn’t as pliable in their opinions, however. After the first atomic bombing, the imperial council voted to continue the war. After the second, they only managed a tie vote, which had to be broken by the emperor in favor of surrender. The high ranking members of the government at that time were exemplary of the far right wing militaristic nationalism of the era, and their political and ideological inheritors of the present maintain a sway on politics today, though frequently unpopular with many citizens.
So here you’ve got two basic explanations. There’s Dower’s, in which the Japanese were looking for something to bring value and pride back to the nation following their defeat. Then there’s the simpler idea that the citizenry was simply not interested in ever walking the same path again, or having their descendents do the same.
There’s a third, not nearly as kind, explanation possible as well. Namely, the people accepted it simply because it was handed to them by those who were in charge. Japanese political and social culture has been colored by authoritarianism since at least the beginning of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1603. The shogun was a father-knows-best figure for his lovable, if not somewhat dim, subjects. His word was law, but that was fine, since he ruled virtuously for the best interests of the people. In modern times, people are more openly questioning or critical of their government, but still follow its word for the most part. This is third explanation, that the Japanese were culturally inclined to accept the constitution simply by virtue of its being imparted to them by the current authority. As they followed their government’s dictates in the imperial era, so would they follow the transplanted democracy of the post-war period. It’s also perfectly conceivable that it was a combination of these three that was the reason for the Japanese accepting the Constitution and the much disputed Article 9 in the first place.
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>dictum set forth by the same
>man who wanted to nuke Korea?
Just an aside, but I thought you were referring to Bush when I read this the first time.
It was funny to me, at least.
…
Right, on with the pedantry.
Asking why the Japanese don’t object to something is fairly simple to answer on one hand. Objecting runs wholly counter to Japanese culture. Children are taught from a young age, via the education system (through the employment of educational styles, virtually mandatory extracurricular club activities which can take up to three hours a day and are done nearly every day year round, and directly through moral education classes) and social expectation that the correct response to any situation which you find to be less-than-agreeable is to simply endure it, preferably without complaint or question. Reason being, if you try to change things, that will cause conflict in the process, and will at the outset cast a shadow over the status quo by implicitly declaring it unsatisfactory (thus, by connection, condemning those who have set the status quo up, the government, and those who have supported it, your fellow citizens).
The logic quickly becomes circular. You should endure (not complain or try to change things) so as not to cause conflict and inconvenience others. And you shouldn’t go causing conflict yourself by trying to change things, because that’s just you having a problem as, look, everyone is fine with it (enduring). Virtually everything here is geared towards avoiding conflict, which inevitably lends itself to avoiding change; and with a populace whose job it is to accept whatever comes along, the government is left to make decisions, and the government itself will adhere to precedent and the mainstream to prevent causing conflict itself - and the precedent is the current status quo defense arrangement.
The first point of basic Japanese defense policy is the maintenance of ties with its defense partner, the US. The US would obviously prefer to keep its bases to project its power into eastern Asia and the Japanese government wouldn’t meddle with that too much. Were the US to pull out, Japan would have to seriously provide for its own defense. But the idea of an overtly armed Japan is alarming to many of their neighbors given Japan’s militaristic past. Or, more accurately, given the equivocal nature with which the Japanese always treat that period of their own history.
There have been in the recent past (the first was around 1994, I think) admissions of responsibility and apologizes for the actions of imperial Japan made by cabinet level officials and even prime ministers. With that, you would think the neighboring countries satisfied (especially since on at least one occasion, the admission was recognized by the head of one of these states, South Korea). However, the language of these statements has been a sticking point. The frequent and deliberate use of the personal “I” pronoun (not so commonplace in normal Japanese conversation, and out of place in official proclamations where officials will use the corporate “we” pronoun) brought the feeling that this was merely personal opinion of a someone who happens to be a high-level government official. The feeling was validated in a number of cases where statements were released after the fact indicating that this was exactly what these opinions were - personal, and not official, statements. Thus, there remains a large degree of external pressure on Japan to not rearm any more than it already has or to have any military dealings anywhere.
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Why does this matter? Because, not possessing the cowboy attitude which some have, and combined with the cultural proclivity to avoid conflict wherever possible along with a predisposition against change, Japan has the tendency to allow external pressure from other nations to have a very large impact on policies with directly international consequences (and some domestic policies as well, such as textbook content for history classes). Whether this state of affairs directly enters into the average Japanese citizen’s head when supporting Article 9, I can’t say. But the impression that their neighbors seem to like them better the less they play with their military probably is not lost upon them.
Another piece of the puzzle is that in some cases, the support of Article 9 becomes conflated with the support of peace. If all you want is peace, then you don’t need any military for that, right? And in Japan, there is what you could call the cult of peace. Children are educated how their country is a peaceful one and working towards peace for others. There are monuments for world peace all over, with an entire park area in Hiroshima (though some of these simply help to reinforce a collective unconscious victim complex, but that’s something else). The backstage status of the JSDF in most instances is useful to supporting this image of a peaceful nation. Military involvement, even for peace-keeping purposes, stands at odds with this image. And being that this is a form- (rather than content-) oriented society, the image is what matters. You ask if they really want to provide an example of peace to the world through their apparent pacifism. I am inclined to say no, and not just because I’m cynical.
The Japanese government has long eyed a seat on the security council. This is merely a piece of a larger picture though. Since shortly after the Meiji Revolution in 1868, Japan has desired to be the leader of Asia. Their rapid modernization was largely done to prevent their colonization or exploitation at the hands of western powers. Perceiving themselves to be the only Asian state to have avoided this fate set them as the natural leading power, in their own eyes. Far right wing apologists frequently argue that Japan’s imperialist expanse was actually to protect their Asian brethren from the abuses of western (read - white) imperialism while, of course, downplaying the exploitations carried out by the Japanese themselves. These apologists are the aforementioned political/ideological inheritors of those in power during the war period.
The hardcore right wingers still manage to hold a fair degree of clout, (in many cases, through bureaucracy, which went largely untouched during SCAP’s tenure) but are not favored popularly so much. They remain a political force to be dealt with, and even frequently pandered to, however. Current prime minister Koizumi had the habit of making trips to the Yasukuni (Peaceful Country) Shrine, a Shinto shrine where the souls of the war dead are deified - among them, a number of convicted war criminals. Every visit brings praise from the right wingers and fits from neighboring China and Korea, due to the presence of said war criminals.
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This is another example of the dodgy treatment of Japanese wartime history that gets the neighboring countries up in arms. Were Koizumi to explicitly say that he recognizes there are war criminals there, that those are not the souls he goes to pay honor to, and that the country has the right to honor its dead while excluding a certain number from those so honored, we might be able to move a step towards some sort of solution. But as it is, to superficially avoid conflict, Koizumi just says that it’s a personal visit. Because if he did say the above, he would lose the support of the right wing in the process. Parenthetically, there have been movements in the past to have the war criminals removed from the rolls of the spirits enshrined, but these have inevitably been blocked by the right wingers.
In a way, I’ve wandered off my earlier subject of Japan’s desire to be the leader of Asia. However, this incident can be seen to be indicative of a larger trend. Namely, Japan wants to be the leader of Asia, but from a distance. It wants to hold authority and priority, but doesn’t want to have to deal with the other nations it’s supposedly leading. Basically, you can say that Japan wants to continue the authoritarian trend of the people in charge deciding what’s to be done without the input of those ruled which we’ve seen in the past and which is still present today, but in this case in an international setting, rather than domestic. This is at the governmental level. As for the civilians, sticking to the concept of pacifism and non-involvement could be read as a form of isolationism.
To actually resolve this would be a long process of facing existing problems and working to change the situation so that they no longer exist. An activity, as noted earlier, that the Japanese society is not culturally predisposed towards. To get the seat on the security council they want, they’d need to be more active in peace keeping initiatives and whatnot. To do that, they’d need a more active military. To do that, they’d have to expand on the current interpretation of their own constitution and get the populace to go along with it. The dispatch of troops to Iraq was thoroughly unpopular and had to be approved after the fact by the Diet, where it was still a very hot issue at the time of the vote (a number of leaders in Koizumi’s own party abstained from voting on it). To get the populace to go along, you’d have to ease off the external pressure, primarily from China and South Korea (though to be fair, both nations bear heavy grudges against Japan and could take the opportunity to beat up on them about the past rather than making good use of it, and China would be unlikely to give up such a good distraction from domestic problems as to actually accept it). And to ease this external pressure, unequivocal, official, clear statements about Japan’s history and aggression against its neighbors would have to be made by the prime minister and wholly supported by higher and more visible members of the government. Which, will never happen until the far right’s grip on positions of power is loosened or removed totally; which… isn’t going to happen any time soon. Especially since the rest of the populace isn’t likely to stand up to them politically and tell them to fuck off.
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Well, thanks for giving me something to do for the first half of my day here.
Oh, and Faithful Summer?
>=P
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