In Japan, the past is a stone’s throw away

WITH THE INTEREST JAPANESE have in their own history and the amount of resources they’ve devoted to archaeology, it’s a bit surprising just how frequently important new discoveries of ancient sites still occur. Reports of these discoveries appear in newspapers almost on a weekly basis.

Another one was announced in Kyushu on the 8th—the Education Committee of Nakagawa-machi, Fukuoka, found the complete site of a fortified military camp that dates from the 15th and 16th centuries, which roughly corresponds to what is called the Warring States Period, or sengoku jidai in Japanese. The discovery of a complete campsite from this era is rare in Japan, and it was the first one discovered in Kyushu.

The 15,000 square-meter site was located on the top of a 56-meter hill surrounded by a river on three sides. Foundations for watchtowers were found in the middle of the camp, which was enclosed by a double wall at its highest point. It had a moat that was four meters wide and two meters deep, and which also had two fortified embankments

Four flat areas were found on the hillside, which are thought to have been the locations of soldiers’ quarters, and the sites of five buildings were identified. The Education Committee had already found the site of another castle and a forge in the same area, so they believe the region was at one time a center for quartering troops and producing weaponry.

Historians think the encampment was used by the Otomo warrior family (which, at the peak of their strength, controlled a third of Kyushu) and the Ouchi warrior family. (They were based in Yamaguchi at the southern tip of Honshu, just across from Kyushu, and are thought to have descended from a Korean immigrant from the Baekche state in the 7th century.)

When people overseas think of today’s Japan, the Super Futuro Techno Megalopolis of Tokyo is probably the first place that comes to mind, but as this report shows (from page 34 of my local newspaper) for most Japanese in the rest of the country, centuries-old history—older than European settlements in North America–is an everyday affair, just down the street or a short drive away.

Note: The Education Committees in local municipal and prefectural governments in Japan are responsible for handling archaeological matters.

U.S. erecting missile shield in Japan

THE UNITED STATES hasn’t forgotten about its treaty commitment to defending Japan, as this article in the International Herald Tribune makes clear.

In a multibillion-dollar experiment, Japan and the United States are erecting the world’s most complex ballistic missile defense shield, a project that is changing the security balance in Asia and has deep implications for Washington’s efforts to pursue a similar strategy in Europe, where the idea has been stalled by the lack of willing partners.

The name of the system is the Joint Tactical Ground Station, or JTAGS, which you can read all about here.

This is not the Patriot system itself, but rather a detection, tracking, and notification system to be used for the missiles. There is already a Patriot system at Kadena in Okinawa, and both the Japanese and American navies use sea-based systems.

The Americans hope this will kill two birds with one stone (so to speak) because further developments in North Korean missile technology might threaten the United States itself.

North Korea has over the past several years made major strides in its development of both nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to the shores of other countries. In October 2006, it conducted its first nuclear test - a step that Iran has not taken - and more than a decade ago shot a multistage ballistic missile over Japan’s main island and well into the Pacific, almost reaching Alaska.

The article also notes there are 50,000 American troops in Japan.

The JTAGS has been set up at the Misawa Air Base at the northern end of the main Japanese island in Aomori. The Japanese military has used the site since the Meiji period, when it was an Imperial Army cavalry training center. It became an air base in 1938.

And to give credit to journalists where credit is due: the first edition of this article used the phrase “balance of power”, but the IHT later amended it to “security balance” in the part quoted above.

The first expression was not appropriate because Japan does not “project power” in the military sense. Their military forces are for self defense only. Indeed, the current interpretation of the Japanese Constitution is that the country would be prohibited from taking preemptive action against North Korea even if the North Koreans were gassing up a warhead-topped missile on the launch pad.

If these systems function properly, that point would no longer be at issue.

Featurettes:

• Misawa was the starting point for the world’s first non-stop trans-Pacific flight. Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon took off from Misawa on the “Miss Veedol” in 1931 and landed 41 hours later in Wenatchee, Washington.
• Misawa is the only combined joint service military base in the western Pacific, as it is used by the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force, and the Japan Air Self Defense Force.
• Misawa also has scheduled civilian flights operated by Japan Airlines to Tokyo’s Haneda Airport and Osaka’s Itami Airport, which makes it one of the few joint civilian-military airports in the American defense system.

Now I’m going to have the phrases “Miss Veedol” and “Wenatchee Washington” bouncing around my head for the next few hours!

Ignorance on parade

GORDON CHANG, writing in the Commentary blog Conventions, has a short post about Japan’s forthcoming suspension of refueling activities in the Indian Ocean. He seems to be aware of the current political situation in this country and the difficulties that presents, but still concludes:

The one thing we can say with assurance is that Japan in the Fukuda era is about to take a large step backward as a member of the international community.

Well, almost. It doesn’t have anything to do with the “Fukuda era”, however. It’s an understandable mistake considering how little Western journalists know about Japan, and their mistaken belief that individuals drive policy. What we can actually say with assurance is that it is a backward step taken because Japan is trying to come to terms with a divided legislature for the first time in its postwar history.

But that’s not the real problem. Just scroll down to see what the posters are saying. Another thing we can say with assurance is that one will seldom see such a concentration of ill-informed intellectual piglets wallowing in their ignorance and thoroughly enjoying it.

Try on some of these:

“It amazes me that a country, so close to danger with China and North Korea, would pull back its commitment to security.”

“Dai Nippon” is truly a “great” nation…It’s long past time for the Japanese to trash the nonsense about non-violence within their constitution. It’s all garbage. It’s all nonsense. And it’s s*#t stupid….It’s all a joke. A pathetic, pusillaminousness (sic) joke.”

And the best (?) for last:

“…in 62 years under the pacifist Constitution and the nuclear umbrella provided by Uncle Sam, the Japanese have produced the likes of Toyotas, PlayStations and manga for adults. Because these products have nothing to do with values worth defending at the risk of their lives, this archipelago is now filled with 127 million purposeless people caught in the endless chain of means. A Tokyo-based Canadian journalist once likened them to zombies.”

This poster pulled off the hat trick: (1) No knowledge of Japan, (2) No knowledge of the inadequacies (or agenda) of the average Tokyo-based journalist, and (3) No knowledge of his own incoherence.

Even the people who disagree with my point of view should find this appalling. You’re of course free to write your comments here, but it seems to me those folks are desperately in need of some facts. In their face, where they can actually read it.

Want to bet they can’t handle the truth?

Don’t undervalue Japanese historical awareness

WHILE SOME PREFER TO INSIST against evidence to the contrary that the Japanese and Koreans get along like dogs and cats (or dogs and monkeys, as the Japanese say), they are unheeded by many in both countries who are quietly working to forge closer ties on many different levels.

Yesterday an exhibit got underway at the Nagoya Castle Museum in Chinzei-cho in Saga Prefecture called Hideyoshi and the Invasions of Korea. The Nagoya Castle was built during those invasions and used by the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi as a staging point for his Korean campaigns. The second-largest castle in Japan at the time, it was finished in 1592 during the first invasion after just eight months of construction. (The photo shows the original site of the castle, which no longer exists.)

The exhibit is being jointly conducted with the Jinju National Museum of South Korea. Located in the southern part of the Korean Peninsula, Jinju was the site of heavy fighting between Japanese and Korean forces.

The Japanese museum is exhibiting 166 items related to Toyotomi’s military campaigns. The Japanese contributions include a letter from the Emperor asking Toyotomi to call off his invasion, and a letter from Ming Dynasty China regarding a Sino-Japanese alliance. (Toyotomi was seeking closer ties with China, which was providing some support to the Koreans. He was angered by the condescending tone of the letter, and that ended that.) The Jinju museum’s contribution to the exhibit includes such items as swords and an early artillery piece used by the Japanese forces.

The exhibit is a result of a cooperative agreement signed by the two museums in 2003. Chinzei-cho, which incorporates an offshore island thought to be the birthplace of King Muryong of Baekche, has long been involved in fostering ties with South Korea. (Indeed, town residents have gone to South Korea to learn how to make kimchee, and the variety they make and sell commercially in Japan is every bit as good as the kimchee I’ve eaten at restaurants in Busan.)

The event will run until November 25, and costs just 300 yen (US$2.55). (It’s free for people of high school age and younger.) For those who think Japanese neglect to examine their history, the story was right there in the middle the first page of the local news section of my newspaper, with a photograph. For those who think exhibits such as these are held only in major cities, the population of Chinzei-cho is about 9,000. The nearest big city is at least an hour away.

There is a great deal of interaction between Japanese and Koreans—even about touchy historical issues—that passes under the radar of the Western and Korean media. It might be because they are unaware of it, or it might be because they choose to ignore it. But it exists nonetheless, despite those who, for reasons of their own, prefer a different narrative when depicting bilateral ties.

Okinawans: Were they pushed, or did they jump?

IT WASN’T THE ORIGINAL PLAN, but this has turned out to be interview week at Ampontan. I’ve got several different posts underway, but keep getting interrupted by other good stories.

Today in Okinawa Prefecture, citizens will hold a rally protesting the decision by the Japanese Ministry of Education to remove a section from textbooks stating that the mass suicides of civilians during the Battle of Okinawa at the end of the Second World War resulted from “military coercion”.

We already know without being told what narrative the world’s media will adopt for this story—resurgent Japanese nationalism and militarism, denial of brutal behavior, failure to come to terms with the war, and–one suspects–a failure to recognize one’s place and stay in it.

Hidden behind this narrative is a different picture of Japan, and one that is all the more compelling because it is the truth—the Japanese conduct the most robust and wide-ranging debate on the planet about their role and behavior in the Pacific War, and always have.

The Japanese media, regardless of their political orientation, will sometimes present the other side of the story. In the Nishinippon Shimbun this morning, I read an article on the rally that went into detail about the textbook controversy and military involvement in civilian suicides.

In other words, none of this information is hidden in Japan. All anyone has to do is pick up a newspaper.

Next to the article was an interview with Toru Oto, a member of the Okinawan prefectural assembly. (On the left in the photo, in good company) How could anyone in Okinawa support the government’s position? You’re about to find out.

As with the other translations this week, this one was uncredited and not on line.

The Okinawa Prefectural Assembly has twice adopted unanimous resolutions calling for the restoration of passages in school textbooks stating that the Japanese military compelled the mass suicides of Okinawan civilians during the Battle of Okinawa, which had been removed from the textbooks during the Ministry of Education’s certification process. Why are you opposed to those resolutions?

Several municipal assemblies adopted the same resolutions, and there were increasing calls within the prefectural assembly for our own resolution. The opposition parties wanted it written into the resolution that the mass suicides occurred due to “military orders or coercion”. I was opposed, however, and one reason is that a court case on this issue is pending. Opinion was divided even in the Liberal Democratic Party. In the end, they settled on the expression, “military involvement”. When the second resolution was adopted, I left the chamber.

The pending court case is the lawsuit in Osaka in which the family of the former Japanese commander of the military forces on the Kerama Islands (next to the main Okinawan island) is suing (author) Kenzaburo Oe and publisher Iwanami Shoten, claiming there were no military orders. They are seeking to prevent Oe and Iwanami from publishing the book. It is odd for the assembly, a legislative body, to politically intervene in an issue that is being contested under civil law.

If there were no military orders, why were there mass suicides?

Before the Battle of Okinawa, during the Battle of Saipan (where many people from Okinawa had moved), residents of the island committed suicide after the American military landed by jumping off a site they called Banzai Cliff. The newspapers incited this occurrence by referring to them as “magnificent Japanese” (rippa na nihonjin). The residents of Okinawa at that time had a strong fear of being taken prisoner. People in the upper levels of the local Okinawan government likely cooperated with the military. I wonder about the idea of blaming everything on the military without questioning the beliefs held by Japanese at that time.

The citizens of Okinawa have filed an objection seeking the restoration of the expression “military coercion”, and the movement has spread throughout the prefecture. As a backdrop to this, what about the deep-seated hatred of the Japanese military, which persecuted the residents during the Battle of Okinawa by either killing them or confiscating their food supplies?

Yes, that exists, but today in Okinawa this has become a political issue rather than a historical issue. Public opinion was manufactured by a series of reports in a media campaign, and as a result those who do not criticize the Education Ministry or the Japanese military are branded as being “anti-prefecture citizens” (hikenmin). The conditions are the same as before the war, when there was no freedom of speech. Even Gov. Hirokazu Nakaima, who was initially hesitant about joining the rally, was unable to turn them down.

What effect will the certification issue have on Okinawan society?

A considerable number of prefectural citizens are under the mistaken impression that the Education Ministry eliminated the textbooks’ references to mass suicide altogether. Even some of my supporters have asked me, “There were mass suicides, weren’t there?” The mass media have changed the points of the debate to manipulate public opinion.

Both the special attack squadron at Chiran (kamikaze pilots at their base in Kagoshima) and the battleship Yamato were thrown into the final battle, (because it was known that) if Okinawa fell, it was over for the main islands as well. But high school students believe that Okinawa was abandoned like some rock, or that it was sacrificed for the sake of the main islands, because that’s all they’re taught. As a result, the certification issue has increased the animosity of the prefectural citizens toward the military, the government, and the main islands.

East Asian childishness

THERE IS NO BETTER DEMONSTRATION of the immaturity prevailing in East Asian relations than the situation described in this post at The Marmot.

Pundits occasionally wonder in print why the countries in this region cannot forge closer ties through free trade agreements and other treaties.

They’d have to outgrow their short pants first.

Also, note the excellent observation by the first commenter. Just imagine the soiled underwear worldwide if the design had come from Japan and not South Korea. (I suspect today’s Japanese would have more sense–and pay more attention to detail–than to sign off on that one, however.)

The Asian century?

BY ALL MEANS, take a look at this New York Times article by author and lecturer Robert D. Kaplan called Lost at Sea.

Here’s how it starts:

The ultimate strategic effect of the Iraq war has been to hasten the arrival of the Asian Century.
While the American government has been occupied in Mesopotamia, and our European allies continue to starve their defense programs, Asian militaries–in particular those of China, India, Japan and South Korea–have been quietly modernizing and in some cases enlarging. Asian dynamism is now military as well as economic.

He then cites specific examples of the growing military strength of the region.

China’s military expansion, with a defense budget growing by double digits for the 19th consecutive year, is part of a broader, regional trend. Russia–a Pacific as well as a European nation, we should remember–is right behind the United States and China as the world’s biggest military spender. Japan, with 119 warships, including 20 diesel-electric submarines, boasts a naval force nearly three times larger than Britain’s. (It is soon to be four times larger: 13 to 19 of Britain’s 44 remaining large ships are set to be mothballed by the Labor government.)

The point about Russia is well taken, but one has to wonder how much longer (in geopolitical years) the Russians will be a factor in the region. Demographic trends in the country point sharply downwards, some of their health indicators are at Third World levels, and those people still remaining in the Russian Far East are moving west–lock, stock, and barrel–in growing numbers.

More pertinent is his acceptance of the enervation of Europe, particularly Old Europe, as a fait accompli. (Europeans objected to that phrase because the truth hurts.) Mr. Kaplan notes that in some European countries, soldiers are now seen as civil servants rather than warmakers.

He also sees signs of a growing Chinese effort to improve ties with Japan:

The United States should also be concerned about the alternative possibility of a China-Japan entente. Some of China’s recent diplomatic approaches to Japan have been couched in a new tone of respect and camaraderie, as it attempts to tame Japan’s push toward rearmament and thus to reduce the regional influence of the United States.

The article is not without its flaws, however:

Still, we should be careful about leveraging Japan and India too overtly against China. The Japanese continue to be distrusted throughout Asia, particularly in the Korean Peninsula, because of the horrors of World War II.

This assumes the United States has the power and the ability to leverage Japan against China, which is not a given. The Japanese and the Chinese have been dealing with each other for millenia. There is no question that Japan has a better understanding of its neighbor, from which it inherited so much culturally, than do the Americans. While the U.S. still has the advantage of sharing an open system of free-market democracy with the Japanese, it is they who run the risk of becoming irrelevant in the western Pacific in the future.

Mr. Kaplan is perhaps unaware that China (not to mention both Koreas) is playing a multifaceted game. It may be the case that they are warming up to Japan, but they themselves still leverage Japan’s past to manipulate their own population in the present. Try this recent article by Peter Harmsen about Chinese war museums (note that Yahoo news links don’t stay around forever):

“I feel a lot of hatred towards the Japanese after I’ve seen what they’ve done,” said 20-year-old student Zhao Xiaosui, visiting the museum for the first time with his girlfriend.

If China were interested in a serious alliance with Japan, it wouldn’t be spending so much time and money to build more than 100 of these museums to brainwash 20-year-olds about a political and social entity that no longer exists.

As the years go by, there is a growing sense of urgency, because the events of three generations ago gradually and inexorably fade out of living memory.
“In a few more years, no one will be left who actually remembers the events,” said Jin Hengwei, the museum’s deputy chief of publicity.
“That’s why we are here, to ensure that the memory of these terrible events get passed from generation to generation. History must not be forgotten. If it is, it’s the same as betraying our ancestors.”

In short, the Chinese are getting it backwards on purpose. I would suggest to Mr. Jin that unless historical memories are allowed to fade naturally, he is betraying the younger generation and his descendents.

The Chinese even have a tame American professor on a leash:

“In a way they’re trying to turn to a more positive interpretation of the past to people,” said James Reilly, a scholar from George Washington University who has studied the role of China’s history museums. “That’s sort of riding a tiger in China, trying to stay ahead of people’s nationalist feelings, putting the party in front of it all, and that’s a very tricky game to play…But the message is not so much Japan bashing. It’s more promoting the internal unity under the guidance of the party. And that is the main reason that they have been growing in recent years.”

Prof. Reilly has it backwards, too: It most assuredly is about Japan bashing. He’s ignoring the intent of the Chinese government to exacerbate nationalist feelings as a way to counteract domestic dissent with the regime.

For more on these museums and the Japanese response, try a previous Ampontan post here.

But I digress. Back to Mr. Kaplan:

As for India, as a number of policy experts leaders there told me on a recent visit: India will remain non-aligned, with a tilt toward the United States. But any official alliance would compromise India’s own shaky relationship with China.

This would explain the relatively cool reception soon-to-be former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe got in India when he suggested an India-Japan-Australia-U.S. alliance.

Kaplan’s conclusion:

“The military trend that is hiding in plain sight is the loss of the Pacific Ocean as an American lake after 60 years of near-total dominance.”

Indeed, Mr. Kaplan could have used a broader brush. There’s no reason to confine oneself to the adjective “military” when speaking of trends in this part of the world.

A more muscular Japan?

THE BOSTON GLOBE HAS PUBLISHED AN OP-ED called A More Muscular Japan that combines a discussion of Japan’s growing military strength and the country’s relations with North Korea.

Some newspapers, such as the New York Times, print articles about Japan that seem deliberately malicious. That is not the case with the Globe article. It is largely a collection of superficial, mundane observations obvious to any layman, combined with a dollop of incoherence.

For example:

After decades of North Korean military provocations, Kim Jong Il now has a big problem on his hands, as the Japan of old is transforming into an increasingly more muscular nation, one less hesitant to use force.

Japan is less hesitant to use force? How do we know this? The author doesn’t say, nor does he provide any argument to support this assertion.

Japan did send a contingent of troops to Iraq, but they weren’t involved in combat operations. The Japanese did exchange fire with and damage a North Korean vessel designed for covert operations of some sort five years ago, which ended when the Koreans scuttled their own craft. (For some reason, the Telegraph article linked here did not see fit to mention the missile the North Koreans fired at the Japanese. BBC TV at the time broadcast film of the battle, and ended it abruptly without showing the missile being fired. But I digress.)

And why does Kim Jong-il suddenly have a problem? All he has to do is stop his “decades of military provocations” and his problems disappear. (Which the Japanese sinking of the North Korean ship seems to have achieved.)

Relations between the two countries have long been contentious and mutually distrustful. From Pyongyang’s perspective, Japan’s military alliance with the United States and its history of harsh colonial rule have remained impediments to normal relations. From Tokyo’s perspective, North Korea’s brazen abduction of Japanese nationals during the late 1970s and early 1980s, its repressive authoritarianism, and its flagrant militarism make North Korea a repellent neighbor.

Why should anyone particularly care about Pyeongyang’s perspective? Japan isn’t causing any problems with the North Koreans. The “history of harsh colonial rule” isn’t an impediment to relations with South Korea.

The author has one thing right—it is a repellent country because of its repressive authoritarianism and flagrant militarism. So why should the perspective of a peaceful, free-market democracy be compared to that of the repellent country in a way that suggests they have equal standing or interests?

Unlike China, where the business community acts as a brake on a Japanese hard line, businesses are largely indifferent to relations with North Korea.

Nowhere in the article is support provided for the implicit suggestion that Japan would take a “hard line” against China if the business community weren’t against it. And what form would this hard line take? The article is about a Japan whose military might is growing. Does that mean the author thinks Japan would be rattling sabers in the direction of Beijing? I hope not, as that would be a very tenuous assertion indeed.

The Japanese do chase away the occasional Chinese submarine that tests its territorial waters, but there is no sign of any serious military dispute on the horizon. Japan holds some islands in the East China Sea that China claims, but China would have to initiate military action for the Japanese to even consider taking up arms. The Chinese have indulged in bellicose rhetoric similar to that of Kim Jong-il, but they haven’t fired any missiles in Tokyo’s direction.

Perhaps that’s because the Chinese business community–which is also its political community and military community–acts as a brake on its more irresponsible elements.

…it appears that diplomacy has, at least temporarily, stemmed the tide of nuclear ambitions in North Korea. Yet, the question remains: When and where will this tide rise again? All bets are off, but you can count on one thing: The next time Japan will be walking taller, and it may be carrying a bigger stick.

Help me out here, somebody. The North Korean tide of nuclear ambitions might be stemmed, but the question remains where it will rise again? Just what is this supposed to mean? There is a specific place that nuclear ambitions rise? The North Koreans would threaten to use nuclear weapons somewhere they haven’t already threatened to do so?

Then we get the dire warning, “all bets are off, but you can count on one thing”. If all bets are off, you can’t count on anything, can you? And those are two things the author is counting on, not one.

“The next time Japan will be walking taller”. What is this “next time” supposed to mean? The next time North Korea has nuclear ambitions? But that would mean Pyeongyang hadn’t really given them up, wouldn’t it? And how will these ambitions be manifest? Will they be accompanied by new threats against Japan? If so, why?

And how will Japan be “walking taller”? Will it have amended its Constitution? (That process will take a few years yet, at the minimum–assuming attempts to amend it are successful.)

“You can count on one thing: The next time Japan…may be carrying a bigger stick.” May be? How can we count on something that may happen…or may not happen?

I am astonished that an American newspaper would publish this slapdash recitation of poorly written banalities. Who could have been responsible for it?

Richard J. Samuels is director of the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His book, Securing Japan: Tokyo’s Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asia, will be published next week.

This man was able to convince a publisher to bring out a whole book’s worth of this sort of prose? And the title! How is the part before the colon related to the part after the colon? Tokyo’s grand strategy is to secure Japan?

I wonder who would read this to the end—other than the MIT grad students who have it forced on them when they take his courses.

No wonder American policymakers responsible for Japan are wandering around in the dark and bumping into walls.