Japan Finally Growing Up, Says Former Premier
By Tim Shorrock
WASHINGTON, Nov 24 (IPS) — Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, the maverick politician who has been running Japan since 2001, has broken important barriers that previously prevented Japan from taking its place in world affairs as a "normal nation", according to one of Japan's elder statesmen.
According to former prime minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, the turning point was when Koizumi decided to defy all criticism by sending Japan's Maritime Self Defence Forces (SDF) to the Middle East to support the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
"That is one of the positive results to come out of his administration," Nakasone, who was Japan's prime minister from 1982 to 1987, said in a speech to the Washington-based Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). His address was co-sponsored by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA.
As a result of Koizumi's unusually blunt and direct style of governing, Japan is well on its way towards revising the Peace Constitution that was imposed on the country by the U.S. occupation forces following World War II, said Nakasone, who has been pushing for such a change for decades.
Koizumi's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is currently writing its version of a new basic law to amend Article Nine of Japan's constitution, which bans the country from involving itself in combat operations — with the exception of defending the country. The constitution also prohibits Japan from exporting military technology to third countries.
The LDP's draft law would amend Article Nine so that "Japan would be allowed to exercise its military power" and participate in peacekeeping operations organised by the United Nations, Nakasone said. "In two years, the issue of constitutional amendments will be on the political agenda," he added. "So Japan is becoming a normal country in that respect."
The LDP draft will be completed by next November, Nakasone said. His own Institute for International Policy Studies is also preparing a draft that will be ready before the LDP's, he said.
But Nakasone did not mention other aspects of the LDP proposals that have riled Japan's neighbors.
The LDP also seeks to change the status of the emperor from a symbolic leader to actual head of state, and wants to adopt the wartime national anthem, 'Kimiyago' and the national flag during World War II, as official symbols of the new Japan.
These proposed changes have raised deep suspicions in the region about the revival of militarism and ultra-nationalism in Japan. In addition, both Korea and China are deeply unhappy about Koizumi's annual visits to the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo, where hundreds of war dead, including many of the country's most notorious war criminals, are buried.
The animus over the visits is so great that China has refused to organise a summit meeting between President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Koizumi until the visits stop. In November, the two men met informally in Santiago at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, where China reiterated its position.
"President Hu Jintao pointed out in the most explicit terms that the crux of the problem in the political relations between China and Japan is the Japanese government leader's homage to the Yasukuni Shrine," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan told reporters.
Li Zhaoxing, China's foreign minister, subsequently told his Japanese counterpart, Nobutaka Machimura, that the Yasukuni issue "is one that cannot be avoided."
But as he pointed out in his speech, Nakasone himself was the first Japanese prime minister to visit the shrine.
At the time of that visit in 1985, Nakasone had forged close ties with then U.S. president Ronald Reagan who allowed Japan, in his words, to become a "floating aircraft carrier" for U.S. forces in Asia. His trip to Yasukuni outraged China as well as South Korea, which was led at the time by military strongman Chun Doo Hwan.
Nakasone said he did not visit the shrine as a Japanese leader but, rather, as a private citizen who "joined the war" and saw "lots of my colleagues die".
Before the war, Yasukuni was operated by the government. But in post-World War II, when Japan was under U.S. occupation, it was decided to separate state from religion — thus ending government involvement in the shrine. Therefore, the issue is one of freedom of religion, Nakasone said.
"It would have been impolite for a prime minister not to go and pay his respects" at the shrine, he said. In addition, the Japanese government "believes that religion is a human right."
But the issue is not that simple. The Yasukuni visits and the drive to amend the constitution reflect a sharp shift towards the right within the LDP. The party's leadership has passed to a younger generation of men in their 50s who want Japan to have its own military force. They include 50-year-old LDP secretary-general Shinzo Abe.
Abe's father, Shintaro Abe, held the same position in the LDP during the 1960s and 1970s, and his grandfather, former prime minister Nobusuke Kishi, was minister of commerce and industry during the wartime Tojo cabinet and was later imprisoned by U.S. forces as a Class A war criminal.
Recently, Abe upbraided China for its refusal to allow a summit meeting, saying "the attitude of China is not that of a mature nation" and promised that if he succeeds Koizumi, "I think it is right that I go to (Yasukuni) too." (Inter Press Service)
