Monday, Apr. 25, 2005

Standing Their Ground

By Jim Frederick | Tokyo

At first glance, the timing looked impeccably bad. With emotions between China and Japan still raw after weeks of anti-Japanese protests in major Chinese cities, 80 Japanese Diet members and the personal representatives of 86 others assembled at 8:00 a.m. last Friday to pay their respects at the Yasukuni Shrine in central Tokyo. No ordinary center of Shinto worship, Yasukuni is where the souls of 2.5 million Japanese war dead are enshrined. Since 1978, when 14 of Japan's most notorious World War II war criminals were added to the books of veneration there, Japan's neighbors have considered the shrine not a national and religious monument, but a hateful celebration of Japan's warmongering past. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's annual trips to the shrine unfailingly provoke formal protests from China. Two weeks ago, Chinese State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan told Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura that one of the major stumbling blocks to improving relations were politicians' visits to Yasukuni.

But on this brisk and sunny spring morning, Diet member Yasukazu Hamada was undeterred. A young and conservative member of Koizumi's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Hamada saw his pilgrimage to Yasukuni as a proper personal tribute to those who made the ultimate sacrifice for his country. No offense to China was intended, he says, but no special concessions were made to soothe China's sensibilities, either. Three such parliamentary prayer services had been held every year for decades, Hamada notes, and this one had been scheduled long before the anti-Japanese riots in China. He looks surprised when asked whether anyone discussed canceling the trip out of deference to the recent tension. "Hardly," says Hamada. "If we had canceled or postponed, that would have given the Chinese the impression that their demonstrations had some sort of meaning, that they had accomplished something."

Not every Japanese politician spoke so intransigently last week. In a statement during a summit of African and Asian leaders in Indonesia, Koizumi expressed "feelings of deep remorse and heartfelt apology" for the "tremendous damage and suffering" that Japan inflicted on Asian nations during its period of colonial rule and aggression—a clear attempt to mend fences with China. The next day, he and Chinese President Hu Jintao met for 55 minutes on the sidelines of the conference. Hu urged Japan to "seriously reflect" on its wartime history and back up a government apology with action. Koizumi called it a "frank and meaningful" exchange. Yet in some respects, Hamada's tough words are more representative of Japan's current political climate than Koizumi's conciliatory ones. After more than a half a century of emerging only fitfully from a pacifist, passive shell, Japan today is striding onto the world stage more boldly than it has done for two generations. And few leaders in Japan seem prepared to apologize for the new mood, however much they may regret the past. A new conservatism is taking hold among the nation's best and brightest young politicians, and Japan, once a diplomatic doormat, has become fueled with a resurgent nationalism.

A foreign-policy conservative himself, Koizumi has been crucial to the change in mood. Upon taking office in 2001, he embarked on a campaign to build Japan's political, diplomatic and military influence to a level that would match its economic might. In the first Gulf War, Japan sent only money to protect its oil interests. In 2003, however, Koizumi became one of the U.S.'s few staunch supporters in the campaign to oust Saddam Hussein, and put (admittedly noncombatant) boots on the ground in 2004 to support the Iraq reconstruction effort. More recently, Japan has (to the consternation of the U.S.) reached out to Iran to secure oil supplies and is seeking to expand its influence in Africa by doubling the amount of aid sent there over the next three years.

But nothing has added urgency to Koizumi's efforts as China's "peaceful rise" to economic and political power. After months of escalation, tensions climaxed two weeks ago when protests in China over Japanese schoolbook revisions that glossed over some of Japan's worst World War II atrocities metastasized into widespread anti-Japanese riots. Newspaper editorials and politicians in Japan began talking ominously about "the lowest point in Sino-Japanese relations in 30 years" and the rising likelihood of an "Asian cold war."

Last week, however, both sides acted to ease the tension. Beijing banned further protests and closed several anti-Japanese websites, while Koizumi offered his apology. But goodwill may be fleeting. Although Koizumi is credited as the architect of Japan's more confrontational foreign policy, he is backed by a growing neoconservative movement in the Diet—a bloc of Young Turk legislators who are both driving and riding the country's rekindled national pride. These are not Japan's traditional patriots, far-right citizens who wear headbands exhorting fealty to the Emperor and who for years have driven their ominous black trucks blaring military marches through the streets of Tokyo. Rather, this new political force consists of young, well-educated, eloquent and media-savvy lawmakers who insist that Japan must become a "normal country" with a fully functioning military and a willingness to take a hard line to protect its interests—a message that has become increasingly popular with a public frustrated by the prospect of a decline in Japan's global stature. Almost without exception, these neocons consider World War II to be ancient history, an event for which they bear no direct responsibility or guilt. "I think we have a balance between the antiwar education we received as children and the political realities the country faces today," says Hamada, a former deputy chief of defense.

But the most significant break from the past is this: neoconservative views have become mainstream in Japan. Shintaro Ishihara, who was once considered a fringe ultra-nationalist, is now the wildly popular governor of Tokyo. And with the socialist and communist parties effectively defunct, there are far more conservatives in parliament than ever before. The boiler room of the neocon network is the "Young Diet Members' Group for Establishing Security Framework for the New Century." This multiparty coalition of about 270 Diet members was co-founded in 2001 by young, influential lawmakers, including former defense chief Shigeru Ishiba and Seiji Maehara, a member of the primary opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). A passel of hotly contested proposals to broaden Japan's ability to dispatch its Self-Defense Forces, say many lawmakers, passed into legislation only because Ishiba and Maehara worked together to break down interparty rivalries. Then there's Ichita Yamamoto, a 47-year-old LDP member and a graduate of Georgetown University, who says that 70-80% of the newly elected parliamentarians are in support of amending the constitution. A frequent guest on TV political talk shows and a strident critic of North Korea, Yamamoto was a vocal proponent of a law passed last year that prohibits uninsured ships from entering Japanese ports. Because most North Korean vessels don't have insurance, the legislation effectively cut off the rogue regime from Japanese trade.

Why have neocons come to the forefront of Japanese political life? Many of the politicians themselves hypothesize that they are both the product and beneficiary of Japan's increasing insecurity about its role in the world. The lost decade of the 1990s, when Japan's status as Asia's most vibrant economy slipped, stripped the nation of its primary postwar identity as the world's great pacifist economic power. Now, China's rise seems to have changed the entire nation's thinking about how to conduct its affairs abroad. Polls show that a majority of Japanese are in favor of revising the constitution and nearly half want to abandon the provision against collective defense. Ross Schaap, Japan analyst at the Eurasia Group consultancy in New York, says changes to the electoral process in 1994 that required candidates to appeal more directly to individual voters than group constituencies such as unions and business groups have given the edge to more populist politicians. "Politicians now have to appeal to voters in a much broader, more diffuse way, and nationalism has been one way to do this," says Schaap. "Now, with China as a competitor and a potential threat, this [message] plays much better."

Many conservative Japanese politicians and policy experts express dismay over what they perceive to be China's cynical harboring of historical grievances for political gain. They claim that despite the mild thaw last week, China is, by its own choice, virtually unappeasable. Tomohiko Taniguchi, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., says, "You're looking at a neighbor who doesn't want to accept any apology." Despite Koizumi's words of contrition last weekend (which, according to some counts, would mark the 22nd time Japan has apologized) and the $35 billion of foreign aid Japan has given to China over the years, some of these observers fear that Chinese leaders will continue to play the history card whenever they consider it expedient. "In the post-cold-war era, the [Chinese] Communist Party is using nationalism as an ideology to maintain legitimacy," says Keizo Takemi, an LDP member who heads the Young Diet Members' group. "Anti-Japanism is an important part of Chinese nationalism, and has become an outlet for pent-up discontent among the young."

Many conservative Japanese say the recent protests were a deliberately orchestrated circus by the Chinese government to throw Japan's bid for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council into chaos. Japan deserves the seat, they say. The country is a prosperous and stable democracy and its economy is the second biggest in the world. It has a free and diverse press, has no nuclear weapons, and its military has not fought a single battle in almost 60 years. And it is the second largest contributor to the U.N., behind the U.S. Faced with such a strong argument for inclusion, China, one of the Security Council's five permanent members, has stirred up old resentments, they say. Beijing "fears a decrease of political influence," says Ishiba. "China doesn't like the idea of increasing the number of votes against it."

Japan and China share a 2,000-year history, and have traded regional dominance back and forth numerous times. With China gathering strength while Japan falters, many Japanese conservatives see little but confrontation ahead. "China is not talking about friendship or an equal footing with Japan, it clearly wants regional leadership," says Yoichiro Sato, an associate professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu. "Japanese leaders haven't resigned themselves to this, and they will put up a fight to maintain their influence in the region."

There continues to be no better symbol of the two countries' inability to bridge their differences than the Yasukuni Shrine. In Tokyo this week, the rumor mill was working overtime, with suggestions that Koizumi has agreed to skip a visit this year as a gesture of good faith to the Chinese. That may or may not turn out to be the case. Yasukuni is controversial in Japan—some lawmakers say trips to the shrine are counterproductive. But others emphasize that those Japanese politicians who want to go to Yasukuni will never be compelled to stop simply because China asks them to. "China uses Yasukuni as a political tool," says Shingo Nishimura, a right-wing member of the DPJ. "We do not use it as a political tool. For us, it is a domestic and a religious matter. It is not something that is negotiable with the Chinese." As long as that remains the case, the chances of a lasting reconciliation between the two nations are slim.