[R-G] Client State: Japan in the American Embrace

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

In Japan, as well as in many countries, it is the Right that sets the
terms of debate.  Should Japan revise the Constitution and expand its
armed forces?  That's the question the Right asks.  The Left merely
says no to that.  But the Left should be asking, What's the point of
revising the Constitution and expanding the armed forces if Japan does
not have a foreign policy of its own independent of Washington's?  Why
doesn't Japan have a foreign policy that makes sense for Japan? --
Yoshie

<http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fb20070708a1.html>
WHAT A STATE WE'RE IN

Japan, just a puppet of America?

By JEFF KINGSTON
CLIENT STATE: Japan in the American Embrace, by Gavan McCormack. New
York: Verso Press, 2007, 246 pp., $ 29.95 (paper)

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his predecessor Junichiro Koizumi are
usually portrayed as assertive nationalists, but come off here as
dutiful and submissive gophers carrying out the Bush administration's
agenda. Looking behind the patriotic rhetoric, Gavan McCormack,
professor emeritus at Australia National University, argues that the
closer embrace of the United States at the opening of the 21st century
has widened the gulf between Japan and its neighbors. Japan's
"neocons" are isolating Japan and making it more dependent on the U.S.
while pretending to be assertive and charting their own destiny.

In trying to become the Great Britain of Asia, Japan is casting off
its security constraints and trying to meet U.S. demands, but in doing
so is alienating China and both Koreas. Moreover, despite
accommodating U.S. demands, it's views are ignored and counsel
unsolicited on matters of importance. In this unequal alliance, Japan
is treated like a vassal and used as an ATM.

"Client State's" central thesis is that Japan is a puppet state, one
that emerged during the U.S. Occupation 1945-52. McCormack points out
that the three key issues at that time — the role of the emperor, the
role of the military and relations with Asian neighbors — remain
"vexed and unresolved."

Like Noam Chomsky and Chalmers Johnson, McCormack challenges the
dominant narrative and underlying assumptions, raising serious
questions about the nature of the U.S.-Japan relationship that are
often buried behind nostrums about "the most important alliance bar
none." He writes, "The Koizumi-Abe 'revolution' actually meant the
liquidation of some important residual levers of Japanese autonomy,
and the acceptance of an even higher level of submission and
exploitation within the U.S. global empire."

McCormack explains that, "Identity is the fundamental unresolved
question of Japan's modern history." In this context one can better
understand the culture war being waged by Abe in imposing patriotic
education, airbrushing Japan's wartime history and promoting
constitutional revision. By allowing the emperor to remain
institutionalized as the symbol of the state in the Constitution,
embracing the wartime conservative elite and postponing any reckoning
over Japan's shared history with Asia due to the Cold War, Washington
has powerfully shaped Japan's identity. These policies keep Japan
aloof from the region and impair moves toward regional reconciliation.

Because Japan has been nurtured as a dependent "superstate" with an
American-imposed identity, the author believes that "The symbols and
rhetoric of nationalism function as empty conceits, while the
substance of nation is denied." He adds that "prime ministerial visits
to Yasukuni Shrine are a sign not of a reviving nationalism so much as
an attempt to compensate for an abandoned one."

"Client State" details the general rightward shift in Japan over the
past decade and the spread of violence against critics of this trend.
McCormack rightly condemns the shameless silence of then Prime
Minister Koizumi and Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe for a full 10
days after the arson attack against Koichi Kato, former Secretary
General of the Liberal Democratic Party, in August 2006 following
Kato's criticism of visits to Yasukuni. This eloquent silence was
"tantamount to consent" and hardly encouraging about the state of
democracy in Japan.

What can Japan do? With inequality rising, employment ever less
secure, and 15 percent of the population living below the poverty
line, neither Koizumi's postal privatization or Abe's emphasis on
constitutional revision and patriotic education seem the right
prescriptions for what ails the nation. Nor is spending vast sums of
money — an estimated $ 26 billion over 10 years — to relocate U.S.
bases.

Perhaps the most ominous development from McCormack's perspective is
the "2005/06 agreement to the fusion of command and intelligence
between Japanese and U.S. forces." This agreement effectively
subordinates Japan to U.S. strategic leadership and commits it to
collective defense, one of the remaining security taboos that
Washington has been eager to eliminate. Richard Armitage, former
deputy secretary of State, is portrayed as a bullying proconsul
repeatedly intervening to shape and drive Japanese security policy.

If Japan loosens its security ties with the U.S., won't it be a
sitting duck in a dangerous neighborhood? On the contrary, McCormack
thinks that the alliance is dangerous in the sense that it insulates
Japan from the need of making headway on reaching accommodation with
its neighbors based on a "return to the understanding of history it
briefly reached in the mid-1990s." Without reconciliation, the chances
for regional peace and security are limited. McCormack advocates Japan
shifting its priority from serving the U.S. to attending to its
domestic problems and helping forge an "Asian commonwealth."

This wide-ranging and perceptive book also explores the unhappy
triangle of Tokyo, Washington and Okinawa, Japan's hypocrisy in its
dealings with North Korea, the implications of Japan's nuclear-energy
program and many more hot topics. We are fortunate to have such a
lucid and compelling commentary on our very own Truman Show.

Jeff Kingston is Director of Asian Studies at Temple University, Japan campus.

The Japan Times: Sunday, July 8, 2007
--
Yoshie