It's hot in here... and why am I in this handbasket?

[phluxisgod]

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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part 4

[ketheres]

During the UN intervention in East Timor, some groups in Indonesia actually wanted Japan to just send money, rather than troops, such was the lingering bad blood against Japan from over half a century prior. Japan ended up sending nearly 700 personnel in early 2002. This was the largest dispatch to date. Previous dispatches include the Golan Heights, Mozambique, and Cambodia. In all cases, troops performed support functions only, no combat. The situation is pretty indicative of the trend in Asia. Japan wants a place on the security council, and thus need to have an active hand in UN peace keeping initiatives, and have been pointed to as not doing their part (often by the US). But when they do manage to take part, their Asian neighbors have the tendency to get antsy and pissed about it.
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.

part 5

[ketheres]

Koizumi skirts the issue by stating the visits are all personal visits: that he’s going as Junichiro Koizumi, and not prime minister of Japan and so his actions do not carry official and therefore political weight (sound familiar?). Recently though, his visits were declared illegal in response to a suit brought against him for violation of church/state separation.
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.

part 6

[ketheres]

As a final addition to your handbasket, Koizumi handed the right wing a present when he announced in March of 2003 the consideration of a contingency plan for a pre-emptive attack against North Korea, should there be eminent threat of attack from the rogue state (a central tenet of the right wingers is the proper rearming or remilitarization of Japan). The move to send troops to Iraq has been seen by some as an attempt to establish precedent for this or other, hopefully more realistic, military activities in the future. Additionally, in the current economic situation in Japan, being awarded some of the reconstruction contracts, which are available only to members of the coalition, is arguably enticing.

Well, thanks for giving me something to do for the first half of my day here.

Oh, and Faithful Summer?
>=P