The Association of Diet Members Who Go to Yasukuni Together. Not... Much

This morning, members of the non-partisan Association of Diet Members Who Go to Yasukuni Together paid their respects at the Yasukuni Shrine on the occasion of the Autumn Seasonal Grand Ceremonies. 47 members attended, down from 67 in 2007 and 84 in 2006. Money quote, from Yoshinobu Shimamura, the Association Chairman:

”The number of Lower House members is down; perhaps they have the [upcoming] Lower House election on their minds.”

So much for the right-wing surge that op-ed writers love to drool over.

Incidentally, none of the Cabinet Ministers, not even those people’s favorite right-wingnut Prime Minister Aso, joined the Elected Ones.

BBC Gets It Wrong on Yasukuni? So What’s New ?

Yasuo Fukuda expressed his "deep regret" over the war, and renewed his country's commitment to peace.

But he did not stop three ministers paying their respects at the Yasukuni shrine to those who died fighting for Japan, including war criminals. sez BBC

So? What's the point?

Previous prime ministers have stirred regional tensions by visiting Yasukuni.

Repeated visits by Junichiro Koizumi caused anger in South Korea and China, where there remains a widely-held conviction that Tokyo has not atoned properly for its war-time crimes.

Mr Koizumi's successor, Shinzo Abe, also paid respects at the shrine, though not while in office.

So? Name the others. Even you admit that Mr. Abe was not a Prime Minister at the time. You didn’t even bother to find out, did you? I’ll give you a name. Yasuhiro Nakasone. I dare you to find another one that “stirred regional tensions.” I can’t, since I don’t have assistants to look out for me.

There, bitterness at Japan's perceived reluctance to assume responsibility for its war-time wrongdoing lies behind several thorny bilateral issues, such as the current dispute over a pair of islets which lie between the two countries.

Let me tell you something. The only way we can put that South Korean fury to rest is if Japan relinquishes all claims to Takeshima, forfeiting its right to resort to seeking legal recourse at the Hague. To South Korea, Japan’s pursuit of legal remedies is a manifestation of its “reluctance to assume responsibility for its wrongdoing”—not limited to “wartime”.

Mr Fukuda has worked to try to resolve the tensions with Japan's neighbours that marked Mr Koizumi's 2001-06 period in office.

Again, an editorial decision to ignore Mr. Abe’s role in the Japan-China (and South Korea) political rapprochement. The willful ignorance repeatedly displayed by Western journalists continues to take way my breath.

Films: May 5 in Japan‐You Know What That Means…

I drafted the following at the beginning of Golden Week, intending to post it on Kodomo no Hi. I filled out the Yasukuni part, but completely forgot about the rest. Now, this reminds me that I did see The Red Balloon, another movie about the world of us little boys and our dreams, so many years ago:

It’s Kodomo no Hi! Let’s hope this movie arrives in time for next year’s Children’s Day.

Speaking of movies, Yasukuni is opening in theaters close to you. According to this Yomiuri report, it opened to a packed crowd (if, unsurprisingly for a documentary, in an 129-132-seat theater used for small-bore films), and no protesters were to be seen. Perhaps the private screening held for some right-wing leaders (no, not the one for the Diet members, in case you wondered) cleared the air, in the same way Western criticism of Shintaro Ishihara’s drama on the final days of Kamikaze pilots died down once the film opened.

Yasukuni the Movie Plays to a Packed Theater

Yasukuni is coming to 23 theaters across the country, one of which may be close to you.

According to this Yomiuri report, the movie opened to a packed crowd in trendy Shibuya (if, unsurprisingly for a documentary, in an 129-132-seat theater used for small-bore films), and no protesters were to be seen. The Sankei reports that all the first-day tickets were quickly sold out, Perhaps the private screening held for some right-wing leaders (no, not the one for the Diet members, in case you wondered) cleared the air, in the same way Western criticism of Shintaro Ishihara’s drama on the final days of Kamikaze pilots died down once the film opened. Indeed, the tributes page features a couple of plugs (one a little iffy) from nationalist/right-wing figures*. The veteran journalist Soichiro Tawara also endorses it, giving it the ultimate mainstream imprimatur.

*… as well as well as a blurb from this Taiwanese “ero-terrrorist” blogger. No, seriously. She also posted on the movie on her own blog here. There is a serious, very reasonable dialogue going on there among the people commenting from all sides, totally unlike the crap you cannot see too little of that is found in the 2 Channel chat rooms.

See AP Spin the Latest Yasukuni Visit

It’s on the CNN, WaPo, and NYT (but not the BBC) websites under the headline Japanese Officials Visit War Shrine. According to the AP wire:

Eight top government officials and more than 150 lawmakers prayed at the Yasukuni Shrine, which reveres 2.5 million war dead, including executed war criminals, said organizer Yoshinobu Shimamura.

It goes on to say that:

The pilgrimage marking an annual spring festival comes at a sensitive time -- the day after the South Korean president's visit and only two weeks before a planned trip by the Chinese president. Provocative, no?

The AP report does tell you that “Prime Minister Fukuda did not attend”. What it doesn’t tell you, though, is that Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura, Foreign Minister Masahiko Koumura, and Shigeru Ishiba also didn’t go. Call them the Big Four--the Chinese authorities told the Koizumi administration that if they stayed away, it would be okay with them (if not with the South Koreans). Prime Minister Koizumi wouldn’t listen, but the Abe administration did. So has the Fukuda administration, but that’s no surprise; there aren’t that many people in the LDP to Mr. Fukuda’s left, as far as foreign relations is concerned. No. The real news is that no Cabinet member joined the Yasukuni-fest, and how often do you see that happen?

The Fukuda administration is floundering, and the last thing that it needed was a distraction involving China and South Korea. Unable to do anything about the timing of the spring rites or the two heads-of-state visits aand the Japan leg of the Olympic torch run, Mr. Fukuda must have made sure that no one in his Cabinet － mostly handpicked by Mr. Abe － would step out of line. That's the real story.

And I had thought that wire services were above that sort of trick. Fooled me once.

The Candidates Talk the Talk Differently; Will They Walk the Walk Differently Too?

The two candidates are seen as ideological opposites, but their differences seem more style than substance, if their appearance on today's Sunday Project is any indication.

On the domestic front, they both favor reform, duly corrected to take account of those left behind, particularly in the less populated areas beyond hailing distance from major urban centers. (Does anyone have a good translation for 地方(chihou)? Does anyone even know what地方(chihou) means?) But neither wants to throw more money at them by way of more public works. They want to be more selective, is want they want. And the details that they gave were too spotty and anecdotal to come to any kind of conclusions.

They both favor a 1% consumption tax hike in order to cover shortfalls in the public pension system. Their differences there seem to be more of an accounting issue than anything else.

At first glance, they appear to be miles apart on the abductees issue. Nobuteru Ishihara, the LDP Secretary General, who came on at the beginning of the program, clearly believes that the US is abandoning the abductees issue. He looked about as furious as he is capable of, and all but came out and advocated pulling out from the Six-Party Talks. When the question is later put to the candidates, though, Mr. Fukuda - as with everything and everyone else, you sometimes feel - advocates dialogue, with the North Koreans here of course. Mr. Aso, alarmingly, appears to endorse Mr. Ishihara's views. But then, he leans forward and, with a cagey grin, tells Soichiro Tawara, the septuagenarian host of the long-running program, that the Six-Party Talks are about North Korea's nuclear program and the abductees issue; so guess who has the most to gain? In one fell swoop of illogic, he has bridged the gap between Mr. Ishihara's anger and Japan’s need to keep talking..

They are not that far apart on Yasukuni either, at least where its international implications ar concerned. Mr. Fukuda advocates a secular, national memorial, while Mr. Aso favors secularizing Yasukuni itself. Both believe that the WW II leaders executed as Class A War Criminals do not belong there. Of course, Mr. Aso explicitly supports Yushukan, the war museum with its singular take on history issues, which would require substantial reworking before it becomes acceptable to our neighbors. But neither plan is much more than a gleam in the eyes of the beholder, and even a Prime Minister Aso can be expected to stay away from Yasukuni for the time being, which is what counts.

As for the more pressing extension of the counter-terrorism act (or, increasingly more appropriately, continuation of the refueling activities), Mr. Fukuda, unlike Mr. Aso, refuses to a priori accept the hypothetical resort to a revote, and predictably repeats his dialogue mantra. But, like Mr. Aso, he does say that he would put the national interest above public opinion, after Mr. Tawara prods him mercilessly like a stray doggie.

Of course, Mr. Aso advocates The Arc of Freedom and Prosperity, which explicitly excludes China. (I've always failed to see the point of this concept, but maybe that's just me. Or it makes me a Panda hugger. Whatever. But I digress.) But he also went to great pains to stress that he was all for a prosperous China. Mr. Fukuda confined himself to stating his opposition to exclusionary undertakings. On the other hand, both candidates expressed concern at the Chinese military build-up.

If this face-off is any indication, style aside, there will be no major break from the Koizumi/Abe years, no matter which one wins. It is yet another demonstration of how the LDP, whatever its leaders desire individually, cannot go beyond the policy constraints that Japan faces without precipitous consequences. And that goes for the two candidates.

It could be worse.

The "History Issues" Trope on Japanese Leadership Is a Crock

A popular trope among people writing about Japan is that Japan will never assume a leadership role in Asia unless it deals with its "history issues". I've never been able to understand it. Literally. I don't understand what they mean by Asia, and I don't understand what they mean by "leadership". I think I know what set of issues they mean by "history issues", but I have a very different understanding of "history issues" when it comes to the effect on our international standing. Let me explain.

When a pundit first stakes his claim, he begins by assuming that Asia begins and ends with China and the Koreas, and possibly though never explicitly Taiwan. As he develops his argument, he usually feels compelled to implicate ASEAN, and rely on Singapore and the Philippines for provenance thereof. The Indian subcontinent is rarely touched upon; West Asia, including the Anatolian and Arabian Peninsulas, are to be strictly avoided.

Now the Philippines are a mainly Christian, former US colony; Singapore is heavily Chinese. It is clear that the pundit is, for the most part, talking about the Northeast Asia, with arguments bleeding out to the broader Sinic civilization plus a Southeast Asian outlier. There is probably greater awareness on the part of the pundit since the Six-Party talks began and the Shangahai Cooperation Organization took off that Russia is also part of Northeast Asia. It is, however, is usually ignored when the pundit expounds on this theme, since the term "history issues" would take on a very different and inconvenient coloring if Russia were to be included in the narrative.

More generally, consistency is usually sacrificed to convenience of the story, as he wantonly switches from one geographical dimension to another without so much as a warning.

And what does he mean by leadership? On what? If we confine the question to security issues in Northeast Asia, the most important arena is the Six-Party talks. But Japan is not the one who holds the most important cards there. China and South Korea continue to provide sustenance for North Korea.

It is at least conceivable that if Japan agreed to normalize relations with North Korea and cough up the billions of dollars of assistance as the means to "settle the past", the argument could be made that Japan and South Korea could make peace with North Korea and tell the US that there is no longer a security threat in Northeast Asia so thank you we no longer need your services. Leaving aside my suspicions that the current North Korean regime will not like that turn of events, the one thing that is standing in the way of Japan amending its ways has nothing to do with the "history issues".

I am talking, of course, about the abductees issue.

So much for the situation on the Korean Peninsula. As for Taiwan, the one other substantial, if much smaller, cloud on the horizon, our strategic ambiguity is only remotely related to "history issues", in the sense that many pro-Taiwan politicians in Japan harbor a very positive view of the pre-WW II Japanese role there, which independence-minded Taiwanese exploit to the fullest. But it is far more driven by the need to accommodate the national security relationship Japan has with the US, again only tangentially connected with "history issues". For lesser issues, such as the disagreement over the Senkaku Islands and the more pressing dispute over the conflicting claims over EEZ covering most significantly offshore gas fields, there is little reason to believe that China would be any more accommodating if Japan were to officially and unconditionally accept Beijing's line on "history issues". On both issues, each state will do what it can get away with; at most, "history issues" have a marginal effect on the rhetoric.

More important in this respect are the low-key but substantive coordination based on mutual interests that continue between the two states. Most recently, Japan and China reached agreement on the substance of a bilateral treaty for mutual assistance on criminal law enforcement. More broadly and to the point, our military vessels and defense ministers are now calling on each other and the two states are gearing up to set up hotlines and other means of cooperation. And all it has taken is Prime Minister Abe staying away from Yasukuni Shrine.

The one example often given by the pundit that is related to the leadership question is China's opposition to Japan's bid to become a member of the UN Security Council. Leaving aside for this occasion the existence of other constraints (including US opposition to the substantial expansion of the Security Council to accommodate the wishes of other nations and groups there of that believe that they too should be permanently represented), as well as my highly skeptical views on the value of the UN, it has mainly been the US that has used the Security Council for its purposes. The other permanent members are either fellow travelers or obstacles for the US. Will it be any different with Japan on board?

The pundit's arguments have little to do with the realities on the ground and very much to do with the sequence of events that Prime Minister Koizumi's Yasukuni visits touched off that nobody, not least of all Beijing, wanted, and everybody but the pundit has worked assiduously to roll back, with the singular, symbolic act of Yauskuni abstinence on the part of our current Prime Minister.

A final point. By now, you may have guessed what my personal subset of "history issues" is. It is the legacy from the more than 90 years since the arrival of the Black Ships and more specifically since 1937 (1931? 1941?) up to the end of WW II. It is the resultant fear of overseas military engagement and, to a much lesser degree, the vague sense of guilt towards our Northeast Asian Sinic neighbors that is holding us back. Politicians, given their professional interests, tend to feel strongly about this, if the left and the right are diametrically opposed to each other in drawing their policy implications from this. For the public in general, this is a matter of decidedly low-priority. Having seen the awful outcome of international intervention in the Middle East, I tend more and more to side with the - relatively speaking - non-committal masses here.

The LDP Loses Big and Prime Minister's No-Show at Yasukuni Takes on New Meaning for TIME

Prime Minister Abe comes in with a muscular foreign policy and national security agenda, loses Upper House election, putting Japan back on the old, more inward-looking America-reliant track. The correspondent thinks that that is not a good idea, given the rise of China and India.

That appears to be the storyline of this TIME article from Bryan Walsh. Though it's pretty much what conventional wisdom dictates these days, there's no reason to reject it for that sake alone. In fact, there's much to be said for this line of reasoning, although I personally am more or less satisfied with the course that our national security policy will likely be taking. (For one thing, I believe that Japan's national interests are generally consonant not only with India but also with China, and that the Chinese authorities feel the same way.)

But my quarrel, as so often, is with the details. For if the media cannot get the facts right, then how can you be sure that they understand? And if they don't understand, why should we believe what they say?

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Prime Minister Abe did not go to pay his respects at the Yasukuni Shrine on August 15. Mr. Walsh sees this as "simply the latest step back toward a more disengaged Japan." But it was nothing of the sort. His no-show was foreordained sometime during the spring or summer of 2006, when Mr. Abe and his associates reached an unstated understanding that Mr. Abe would not visit Yasukuni during his likely tenure as successor to Junichiro Koizumi. In fact, it has enabled Mr. Abe to pursue what some call a nationalist agenda with nary a peep from Chinese authorities. (Most people see such acquiescence as a consequence of their desire for domestic stability. I don't disagree with this assessment, but I also believe that this is possible only because they do not actually see such a Japan in its own right as a strategic threat in its own right.) Besides, he has always believed that the spring and autumn rites are the more important events, which makes sense when you consider his historical perspective and political agenda.

In fact, the Upper House election vote against the LDP had far more to do with outrage at the political financing scandals, public communications-challenged Cabinet members, and the public pension system debacle than with rejection of Mr. Abe's external policies. The resultant difficulties that the ruling coalition will have in getting an extension of the counter-terrorism act could be of serious consequence – I change my mind on an almost daily basis about the prospects for a deal - but they have as much to do with the personal inclinations of Ozawa Ichiro, the DPJ leader, than with policy differences between the LDP and the DPJ as institutions. Yes, Mr. Abe needs a renewed emphasis on the domestic front, but that in of itself need not set back his external policy priorities, which from international standards were exceedingly modest in the first place. The DPJ supports patriotism in education, and a constitutional amendment needs a supermajority in the first place. And the tentative favorite to take over just in case Mr. Abe must leave is Taro Aso, whose views are to a great extent in synch with Mr. Abe's. (I still have trouble seeing him as prime minister material, but I digress.) Don't assume that Mr. Abe's policy priorities are on the outs, just because he himself is on the ropes.

Then there is the historical backdrop. Mr. Walsh writes:

Aug. 15 is the anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II, a day of reflection for the Japanese and celebration for much of the rest of Asia.

Now there are 1.3 billion people in China, and I am sure that it is a cause for celebration for the Han, or 91.1% of Chinese citizens., and I am sure that the 72.3 million Koreans feel even more strongly about this. And I guess that most of the 4.6 million Singaporeans will agree that August 15 is a good day. But what of the 1.44 billion people on the Indian subcontinent, not to mention the 20 million Sri Lankans just off shore? Do you think that they share, to a man, fond memories of the victory for their British overlords? Do the 234 million Indonesians care that on August 15, the Dutch could finally confirm for good (or so they thought) the return of their East Indies colonies? Or was it merely a milestone of decidedly mixed blessings that passes barely noticed in the narrative of their fight to regain sovereignty, which they officially declared on August 17, only two days later? As for the 142.8 million Russians, or at least 79.8% of them (geographically, Russia is a predominantly Asian empire), I'm sure that they remain disappointed that the war ended so early. In fact, they made sure it didn't, for themselves at least.)

You see, underpinning Mr. Walsh's article is a uniquely American perspective that sees the war with Japan as a war of liberation, and there is an undeniable truth to that. But for most of Asia, it was a war of the empires. Know that there lies Japan's true transgression, and that "Asia" so understands that. Know too, that there is also a very broad Japanese consensus on this that includes Mr. Abe to Mr. Ozawa and stretches from the left and far into the right, including along the way luminaries such as Yasuhiro Nakasone.

Why does all this matter? For one thing, unless you understand the backstory, you won't understand the who, what, and why of the conflicts over our histories and the contemporary symbols thereof. More to the point of this complaint, you will have no clue of the long-term external consequences of the setback to Mr. Abe. For another, you won't understand why so many well-meaning American interjections into the debate at best do nothing and at worst exacerbate them, but that's a subject of another story.

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Sorry, Anonymous. Not enough time and energy today for a longer piece on habatsu. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile on CNN, a Yasukuni Story Broke Out in the Last 24 Hours…

In fact, the Reuters wire makes a scrupulous effort to tell the fascinating story of Li Ying, a Chinese film director who is releasing a documentary on Yasukuni that he has been working on for the last ten years. The article is filled with nuances, some of them likely unintended, but here they are:

Mr. Li has been living in Japan for the last seventeen years. The Tienanmen Incident occurred in 1989. This does not look like a coincidence. The fact that the Reuters wire comes out of Beijing though, where Mr. Li is seeking a permit to broadcast the documentary, speaks to the passing of the years. The Reuters wire quotes Mr. Li, "I believe there will be no problem [in getting the permit]. …Wouldn't it be ridiculous if this film can be shown in Japan and South Korea, but not China? The best would be if we could show it in all three at once." That he even has to consider such a possibility reflects the enormous post-Koizumi, pre-Beijing 2008 changes in China's approach to its relationship with Japan. As well as how much further China still has to go before it can be a state that no longer systemically manipulates dissent.

In its reference to "the Nanjing Massacre, or Rape of Nanking," Reuters finds a way to avoid attention being diverted to another stage by giving a death-toll estimate of "about 142,000 people, according to Allied estimates> after the war."

I have a couple of quibbles:

The headline Chinese Director Opens Wounds with Yasukuni Shrine Film is misleading. The wound has never closed. And for some, it never will; for there is no answer that will satisfy all.

The wire says, "The film follows Japanese veterans who believe their nation doesn't honor its war dead enough, as well as young Japanese protesters beaten by worshippers at the shrine.

"'I make Yasukuni like a stage, and all these people reveal themselves upon it," explained Li."

But this trope excludes most of the people of Japan, who eschew this stage altogether. They must already have been a majority when he started filming ten years ago. And the future does not look good for the kind of people who beat up protesters. The right wing activists have seen their ranks thin over the years. (Have the end of the bubble economy and the onset of an aging society taken the wind out of their sails?) Would Mr. Li be able to secure the same footage today? The battle seems to be taking place more and more on the Internet and the media, rather than on the streets.

That's about it. Except:

According to the Reuters wire, "Li's film was made with assistance and funding from Japan and Korea, while post-production support came from the Beijing Film Academy and a private Chinese production house." Of course the Japanese support must have been from private sources. But where does the Beijing Film Academy get its money? Japan, like it or not, is a pluralistic democracy. It is important to keep that in mind in interpreting the meaning of actions and attributing responsibility for them, as well as determining the political boundaries of the doable.

I may be giving this some more thought. But this is where I'm at on this.

Richard Halloran Holds Forth on Shinto Resurgence, Contrasts Yasukuni and Meiji Shrines

Veteran Japan hand Richard Halloran blew into town, did some walking around, came up with something that goes little noticed even here in Japan, and wrote it up in Real Clear Politics.

Maybe I've been too lazy to notice, maybe it's another case of it takes a gaijin, but Mr. Halloran's story of a resurgent Shinto makes sense. After all, there's solid evidence of a spiritual malaise begging to be taken care of, from soaring suicides rates to spiritual nostrum peddlers commanding center stage in the mainstream media (yes, I'm talking about the Sopranos-meets-Sylvia-Brown Kazuko Hosogi and the John-Edward-cum-Deepak-Chopra Hiroyuki Ehara*) to the more general dissatisfaction that seems to grip the Japanese mind whenever we are asked to answer opinion polls. We tend to blame the aftereffects of the bubble years. We are unsatisfied with the present, and worried about the future; where else are we to go?

A lesser hand might try to weave it into the surging right, military might, trope that earns space in the English-language mainstream media. Mr. Halloran instead focuses on the Meiji Shrine, and juxtaposes it with the Yasukuni, which has, fairly or unfairly, come to be solely identified in the ELMSM with the dark side of our post-Meiji Restoration history. Indeed, the two shrines surely provide the leitmotifs that weave through Prime Minister Abe's historical narrative, much in the way the pre-1945 and post-1945 biographies of his grandfather Nobusuke Kishi illuminate his personal animus (in the Jungian sense, so the dictionary tells me).

*I suppose I should be happy our low-key, ecumenical, quasi-animistic approach to the supernatural precludes the proliferation of televangelist knock-offs. Then again, some might argue that we have the Tokugawa Shogunate to thank (or curse, depending on your point of view) for being spared the worst effects of a dominant, proselytizing creed.

Japan: Sakaki, Masakaki; Big Difference, MTC Points Out

As the Shisaku blog points out, masakaki is what the 50,000 Yen paid for, not the name of the plant, which is masaki. Got it, me?

MTC always links through, never directly. This may be common courtesy, but it makes it easier to agree to disagree, as we so often do.

Japan: Uh-oh, Mr. Abe Gives 50,000 Yen and a Nice Potted Plant to Yasukuni… Wait, What's This Other Name on the…

The prime minister also donated a potted two-meter high masakaki (cleyera japonica, just in case you wondered) as well. And South Korea is predictably angry. I wager that Beijing will shrug it off, and will let Mr. Abe revisit Beijing, later this year. Giving to Yasukuni must be a fad among the Japanese political leadership, since Yohei Kono, the President of the Lower House, also donated a potted plant.

If Mr. Kohno's name seems familiar to you, yes, he's the same Yohei Kono, the dovish LDP leader, who issued the Kohno Statement (the famous apology to comfort women) in 1993 as Foreign Minister. This Yomiuri article implies Mr. Kono also made a monetary offering, and has been doing this ever since he rose to the top post in the Lower House.

I can't wait to see how the Western media is going to parse this Kono angle. If they ever bother to look, that is. This is about as good as it gets.

Oh well, given BBC standards, it could be worse.