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 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