LDP Pro-China Wing Fires Back at Abe

LDP’s Pro-China Wing Fires Back at Abe; More Yeast for the Nikkei; and More Confusion About the Ryukyus

It always seemed likely that, back in the Deng Xiaoping days, the PRC and Japan were eager to cut a deal for normalization of relations and, therefore, both sides would agree to put the Senkaku issue on the backburner.

The “set aside the Senkakus” sentiment was certainly the governing spirit at a press conference during Deng’s 1978 visit to Japan, as Ezra Vogel’s biography of Deng records (pg. 304 of the ebook):

When a reporter asked about the ownership of the Senkaku Islands, the audience became tense, but Deng replied that the Chinese and Japanese held different views, had different names for the islands, and should put the issue aside so that later generations, who would be wiser than those present, could solve the problem.  The audience was visibly impressed…

In the amicable context of 1978, “putting the issue aside” would appear to mean “let’s discuss it later” which puts the issue well down the slippery slope of “an issue that can be discussed/an issue for discussion/an issue that is open to negotiation”.

Apparently, there wasn’t any public confirmation that this spirit informed the actual Sino-Japanese discussions behind closed doors.

Until now.

In an interesting development, a China-friendly LDP elder decided to go public with his recollections of the Japanese attitude toward the Senkakus during the period of normalization under Tanaka and Deng, in an apparent effort to restore the islands’ status as a topic of engagement rather than an excuse for self-righteous belligerence.

This creates some awkwardness for the Abe government, which has hung its hat on the position that the Senkakus have always and indubitably (at least since 1895 and disregarding the 1945-1952 hiatus of US occupation) belonged to Japan,  the sovereignty of the sacred rocks has never been debased by inclusion in the greasy diplomatic dealings between Japan and China, we can do anything we want with them, if you want to talk about the Senkakus, talk to the hand, buster.

Reawakening memories of the time when discussions relating to the Senkakus were a matter of mutual amity probably also reflects the fact that the Chinese government is getting anxious about the downward spiral of PRC-Japan relations—and Prime Minister Abe’s success in building anti-China relationships with India, Vietnam, et. al.—and is interested in appearing less confrontational.

The Chinese charm offensive also includes a full-court press of high level cordiality at the Shangri-La defense confab and a rather frantic cozying up to the United States (including a request for the early Xi-Obama Sunnyland  summit and, to sweeten the pot, more than the usual expressions of impatience with North Korea).

This gives President Obama at degree of leverage over the PRC that he has not enjoyed in the past.

The USA will take advantage of this favorable situation by forcibly torqueing Xi’s testicles on the matter of “cyberwarfare” and cyberespionage.

It will be interesting to see if President Obama also exploits China’s accommodating posture to “rebalance” the Pacific situation by tilting a little more toward China and away from Japan, or contents himself with a zero-sum win on cyber stuff.

Contradicting government, Tanaka confidant says two sides cut deal at time of normalization of ties

Senkaku row shelved in ’70s: Nonaka

Kyodo

Jun 5, 2013 BEIJING – In a new ripple to Japan’s assertion of ownership of the disputed Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, former chief Cabinet Secretary Hiromu Nonaka said leaders from Japan and China had agreed to shelve the territory row when the two countries normalized relations in the early 1970s.

The remark by the former Liberal Democratic heavyweight, a disciple of the late Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, who cut the normalization deal with Beijing in 1972, contradicts the government’s official stance that there was no such agreement at the time.

Nonaka, who is leading a delegation of current and former Diet members on a visit to China, told reporters Monday, “Just after the normalization of relations, I was told clearly by then-Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka that a decision was made on the normalization by shelving the Senkaku issue.

“As a living witness, I would like to make clear (what I heard),” Nonaka said after meeting in Beijing with Liu Yunshan, the fifth-ranked leader of the Chinese Communist Party.

Liu is said to have told the delegation that Japan is responsible for the current confrontation with China. Apparently aiming to have Japan acknowledge at least the existence of a bilateral territorial dispute, Liu also reportedly said he hopes to see a solution reached through dialogue between the two governments.

In Tokyo, top officials reiterated the government’s view that the Senkakus are not an issue Japan should put on the shelf since no territorial dispute exists.

“There is no truth (to the remark) that (Japan) agreed with China to shelve or maintain the status quo of the Senkaku Islands,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said, reiterating Tokyo’s position that no territorial dispute exists.

Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida also repeated the same line: “It is not the case that to this day, we have agreed to shelve (the dispute), nor has there been a territorial dispute that should be shelved in the first place.”

Bubble Bubble Toil & Trouble

Looks like Prime Minister Abe is preparing additional bubbliciousness for the Nikkei and, perhaps, lucky stock exchanges in emerging markets:

Japan's government is set to urge the nation's public pension funds - a pool of over $2 trillion - to increase their investment in equities and overseas assets as part of a growth strategy being readied by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, according to people with knowledge of the policy shift. 

It seems that the Japanese government is going to make sure the Japanese stock market stays propped up by artificial means, at least until the Japanese economy restructures into that senior-citizen-fueled growth engine we've been told about, or the smart money cashes out, whichever comes first.

Hmmm.  Should I be buying the Nikkei? shorting it?...or both?

Somebody Else Is Badly Confused About the China/Okinawa Issue

But it’s not AFP.

Can anybody tease out the contradiction of this headline from on line news site Japan Today:

China distances itself from claim it owns Okinawa

And the lede from the accompanying article, sourced from AFP?

A top Chinese general on Sunday sought to distance the country from claims by some of its scholars that the Ryukyu Islands, which include Okinawa, do not belong to Japan.

I hate to admit it, but this qualifies as supporting evidence for the “blogsites have lower standards than traditional news outlets” slam.

Japan Today is also guilty of not policing its Wikipedia entry which is a total rip job by somebody who obviously totally completely hates Japan Today.

Sample:

Claims of Universal Expertise

Japan Today staff has been known to employ underhanded tactics to prevent criticisms of media incompetence.  Often times they will intentionally ignore new or existing information and state that the only truth is their stance. They claim they are experts in all fields, including law, engineering, psychology, and politics.

…which, comes to think of it, also supports the “Wikipedia content can’t be trusted” slam.

Recently, the founder of Japan Today (no longer involved in operations) showed up on the Talk page to criticize the entry but, as of this writing, it’s still up there in all its glory.

On the other hand, for a good piece of bloginess on the Ryukyu/Okinawa issue, here’s a link to something I wrote on the LDP's Okinawa problem--and China's pleasure in stirring the pot.

The Tiger and the Fox

“Irritating Japan” Well On Its Way to Replacing “Rising China” Meme

There is a delicious—well, delicious to me, anyway—flavor of Western bewilderment about the neverending parade of Japanese nationalist shenanigans.

The most recent entry was Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto’s endorsement of the World War II Japanese military brothel system a.k.a. “comfort women”:

"In the circumstances in which bullets are flying like rain and wind, the soldiers are running around at the risk of losing their lives," 

"If you want them to have a rest in such a situation, a comfort women system is necessary. Anyone can understand that." 

Hashimoto—who seems to have way too much of his mental space occupied by visions of sexually rampaging soldiers-- made his remarks in the context of promoting the Okinawan sex worker industry as a legal source of relief for the hard-working American military men based on the island.

Toru Hashimoto…told reporters Monday that he visited with Marine Corps Air Station Futenma’s commander last month and told him that servicemembers should make more use of Japan’s legalized sex industry.

“There are places where people can legally release their sexual energy in Japan,” Hashimoto said during a video press conference Monday in Osaka. “Unless they make use of these facilities, it will be difficult to control the sexual energies of the wild Marines.”

Hashimoto said that the commander responded with a bitter smile and told him that brothels are off-limits to U.S. servicemembers.

Bitter smile, indeed.

Perhaps the US government took little comfort from Hashimoto conflating the sexual needs of the US military today with those of the Imperial Japanese Army.

For those who have been following the Okinawan issue—and China's rather malicious and successful highlighting of particularist sentiments among the Okinawan population as part of its campaign to undermine Japan’s claim to eternal and uncontested sovereignty over the Senkakus—it was noteworthy that there were also Okinawan protests against Hashimoto’s comfort-women remarks.

Since most comfort women on Okinawa during World War II were Korean, Okinawan objections are apparently more along the lines of resentment against the sexual impositions involved in contemporary Tokyo-imposed US basing, rather than the historical revisionism on the comfort women issue that inflamed opinion in China and South Korea.

As China continues to push the Okinawan hot button with its questioning of Japanese sovereignty over the Ryukyu Island chain, expect more media focus on the most loaded question in Okinawa/Japanese history: the Battle of Okinawa in 1945.  

Japanese nationalists have worked assiduously to shape the official narrative—down to the wording of memorial plaques—to depict Okinawa as the frontline of Japanese resistance.  However, many Okinawans consider the battle—which resulted in the death of over 100,000 Okinawan civilians in the Japanese military’s Gotterdammerung defense—as an atrocity in which Okinawa and Okinawans were sacrificed to buy time for the Japanese home islands.  (In the event, fear that the bloody action on Okinawa would be replicated across the four “home islands” reportedly convinced President Truman to cancel the invasion and short-circuit the war by dropping atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.)

A vocal sector of Okinawan public opinion regards Japanese nationalist revisionism as an effort to deny Okinawan suffering and submerge it beneath an untrue narrative of Japanese heroism.

Asia-Japan Focus reported in 2012 on the fracas over a plaque commemorating the Japanese army headquarters on Okinawa (which, interestingly and tragically, was sited at Shuri Castle, the “pre-eminent symbol of the Ryukyu Kingdom” according to the translators):

A controversy has arisen over Okinawa governor Nakaima’s deletion of the word “suteishi" (sacrificial stone) [this doesn’t mean “sacrificial stone” in the exalted sense of a “consecrated altar”; it refers to a disposable position and losable game piece in the board game of go--PL]  from the draft that was prepared for the translation of the description for the explanation panel about the 32nd Army HQ Shelter. Hitherto, the word “suteishi” has been used as a key term that directly captures the essence of the Battle of Okinawa. This word also symbolises “postwar” Japan-Okinawa relations, in which Japan regained its sovereignty with the San Francisco Peace Treaty, while abandoning Okiwawa to US military domination, and forcing it to bear the burden of the US bases, even after Japan regained administrative rights over Okinawa.

There is nothing new about Japanese nationalism with a World War II denialist tinge. 

Despite efforts to keep it buttoned up (members of the ruling LDP distanced themselves from Hashimoto’s remarks), nationalism keeps bubbling up and its emergence into the Japanese political mainstream is an unpleasant surprise for American pundits.

After all, “peaceful, progressive, and democratic Japan” is more than a useful cliche in the compare-and-contrast framing opposite “assertive, oppressive, and communist China”.

A cooperative, helpful Japan is the linchpin of US efforts to orchestrate a soft containment of China based on US-friendly liberal norms and justified by the idea that the unruly Chinese dragon needs to be kept in its cage by an alliance of the US and Asian democracies.

Japan “going off the res” and behaving like a war-loving dingbat creates obvious problems for the optics of the “pivot to Asia”.  

Japanese nationalism also complicates the US narrative with its healthy dose of anti-Americanism (including a sub voce tendency to blame the US-imposed constitution, US-demanded yen appreciation, the US-inflicted global financial crisis, and US blind infatuation with the strategic and economic importance of China for Japan’s long term woes), and a remarkable and embarrassing hostility toward critical US ally South Korea as Japan’s zero-sum rival for economic and diplomatic leadership among the Asian democracies.

The fact that a bona-fide Asian democracy can act so “assertively” also calls into question the lazy liberal assumption that democratization is a panacea which automatically translates into tolerance, transnational amity, de-escalation of tensions, and regional stability.

A less obvious but, I expect, to US diplomatic strategists, more pressing problem is that nationalist ideals are serving as a justification for an independent-minded Japanese foreign policy that plays lip service to US objectives but actually exploits US backing in order to advance Japanese interests at the expense of US goals.

In the US, we call it “The tail wagging the dog”.

In China (and Japan), the relevant proverb is “The fox pretending to the tiger’s might”.  (In the Chinese proverb, the fox claims that people respect him more than the tiger.  “Just walk behind me, and you’ll see how people fear me.”  The gullible tiger follows the fox and is chagrined to see all the other animals fleeing, apparently, before the fox.)

My personal shorthand for the situation is “Japan as the Israel of East Asia”.  

I think this is a metaphor that troubles the US government as well.  

After all, one of the attractions of pivoting to Asia and away from the Middle East was that the United States would be leaving a region in which its freedom of movement was constrained at enormous financial, military, and diplomatic cost by Israel’s ability to substitute its own security narrative (existential threat of Iran’s nuclear weapons) for the US priority, at least for the Obama administration (normalizing relations with Iran and resolution of the Palestinian issue).

Instead, I have a feeling that Japan under nationalist rule will be more interested in encouraging polarization between pro-China and pro-US blocs in Asia—thereby providing Japan with a favored and decisive role—than it will be in behaving like the good, obedient ally assisting the United States as it manages its relationship with China-- soon going to be the world’s largest economy--at the expense of the interests and anxieties of an increasingly marginalized Japan.

By this reading, the Senkaku crisis—which forces the United States to line up with Japan against China over some Taiwanese rocks the Obama administration cares nothing about—is like money in the bank for the Abe government.

Therefore I’m not expecting that crisis to go anywhere soon.