Another sign of lingering Japanese war guilt

Following yesterday's finding that a plurality of respondents indicated that Japan still needs to apologize for its actions during the war, I have found, thanks to a tip from a trusted correspondent, a survey conducted by Fuji TV'sHodo 2001" program in April that suggests that the Japanese people are far from defiant when it comes to making amends for Japan's wartime crimes.

If readers go to the Hodo 2001 site's public opinion survey archive and scroll down to the poll from 8 April, they will find an opinion poll that shows that the Japanese people are not exactly rallying behind The Facts brigade (and let's not forget the honorary representative from the English-language blogosphere).

The third question in the survey asked, "Regarding the comfort women issue, do you think that Japan has apologized sufficiently?" 43.8% answered no, 37.2% answered yes. (Beyond that, a majority answered "no" to the question asking whether Prime Minister Abe should pray at Yasukuni.)

At the same time, the survey found that 59% of respondents "cannot understand" the repeated criticism by Chinese and South Korean leaders of the various statements made by Japanese politicians about history problems, which goes to show, I think, that historical reconciliation begins at home; there is a limit to what efforts to improve acceptance of past crimes emanating from outside Japan can achieve, which is not to say that others should abstain from good-faith criticism of the revisionists, relativists, and deniers, but it must be done with the knowledge that ultimately the Japanese people have to do the job themselves.

Abe interviewed in the Washington Post

In advance of Abe's impending visit to Washington, DC, the Washington Post has published an interview of Abe by Lally Weymouth, journalist and daughter of the late Katherine Graham. It is unclear in which language the interview was conducted or whether Abe was speaking through an interpreter.

But regardless of the language, Abe once again displays his inability to say anything of substance.

It is no fault of Weymouth's. Her questions were pointed, and she actually pressed Abe on the comfort women issue. She also asked whether Japan feels "sidelined" in the six-party talks over the abductions issue, to which Abe laughably replied, "On this question, Japan and the United States are fully coordinated." Really? Fully coordinated? Based on what? "I discussed this matter on the phone with President Bush." If Abe actually thinks this, then he has learned nothing from the shift in US foreign policy that resulted in the current (failing) agreement in the first place.

What follows is typical boilerplate about cooperation in East Asia with China and Japan's bearing a greater share of the burdens of maintaining regional and global order, after which Weymouth raises the question of the Constitution. She questioned him as to whether a major impetus for constitution revision is a desire to have a constitution written by Japanese hands, to which he replied, "...The important thing is that we write the constitution ourselves. Because the constitution is the basic law of the land."

I'm not quite sure how those two sentences are connected. Yes, the constitution is the basic law of the land, but is the current constitution somehow less than a "basic law of the land" because it was drafted during the occupation? I recognize that there are good reasons for Japan to revise its constitution -- which, in Abe's defense, he does articulate in this interview -- but wounded pride from having a constitution written by occupation authorities shouldn't be one of them. After sixty years of governance under the postwar constitution, the national pride argument just doesn't hold water. Japan has made its constitution its own.

The conversation then moved to the comfort women issue, in regard to which Abe stated, "As a human being, I would like to express my sympathies, and also as prime minister of Japan I need to apologize to them." If he needs to apologize, what's stopping him? He is the prime minister, after all. If he thinks it's important, then he ought to quit talking about apologizing and just do it.

All in all, there's not all that much to take from this, other than that Abe remains a slippery character -- just as I wrote back in November when Abe was interviewed by the FT's David Pilling.

Japan's PR problem

Francis Fukuyama has written a brief essay called "The Trouble with Japanese Nationalism," in which he recounts his own encounters with Japanese nationalists -- including the translator of The End of History and the Last Man -- and wonders whether the US wants a normalized Japan that has yet to resolve its historical issues. (Hat tip: Arts and Letters Daily.)

He concludes:

A number of American strategists are eager to ring China with a NATO-like defensive barrier, building outward from the US-Japan Security Treaty. Since the final days of the Cold War, the US has been pushing Japan to rearm, and has officially supported a proposed revision of Article 9 of the postwar constitution, which bans Japan from having a military or waging war.

But America should be careful about what it wishes for. The legitimacy of the entire American military position in the Far East is built around the US exercising Japan’s sovereign function of self-defense. Japan’s unilateral revision of Article 9, viewed against the backdrop of its new nationalism, would isolate Japan from virtually the whole of Asia.

Revising Article 9 has long been part of Abe’s agenda, but whether he pushes ahead with it will depend in large part on the kind of advice he gets from close friends in the US. President Bush was unwilling to say anything about Japan’s new nationalism to his “good friend Junichiro” out of gratitude for Japanese support in Iraq. Now that Japan has withdrawn its small contingent of troops, perhaps Bush will speak plainly to Abe.

Fukuyama's argument is largely unexceptional, but it illustrates the real consequences of the reports trickling out of Japan about just how little some senior Japanese politicians have come to terms with Imperial Japan's crimes. Japanese nationalists may have an easy time dismissing Chinese and Korean complaints about Yasukuni visits and the like, but if the US -- the executive branch especially -- begins voicing serious complaints about how the Japanese view their wartime history, the alliance will be in serious trouble.

Why? Well, because after urging Japan to do more over the past two decades, the US cannot slam the Pandora's box of Japanese normalization shut, certainly not without angering Japanese politicians (and perhaps the public at large) -- some of whom are demanding that Japan takes a greater role in defending itself even without the US cautioning Japan to slow down. The result could well be the end of the alliance, with the US coming around the Chinese/Korean view of Japan.

So Fukuyama's essay --- coming from an intellectual who is by no means known to be hostile to Japan's playing a greater role internationally -- can be taken as an indicator that the time for the allies to resolve the tensions between them is now. Perhaps the long-awaited 2 + 2 meeting, now scheduled for 30 April, will go some way towards clearing the air, and laying the groundwork for a more durable framework for bilateral cooperation.

The california rolls are safe

After announcing plans to institute a certification system for Japanese restaurants overseas back in November, Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries, headed by the beleaguered Matsuoka Toshikatsu (the subject of this superb book -- more on this soon), has decided to abandon these plans after opposition from citizens' groups and after a panel chaired by Ogura Kazuo of the Japan Foundation concluded that it is difficult to determine what exactly Japanese cuisine is.

So ends a bizarre attempt by Japan to flex its muscles in the cultural arena. Given that Japan remains a perennial favorite in this annual BBC survey, it's probably best not to give foreigners another reason to dislike Japan in light of the comfort women issue, which appears to be going from bad to worse, with the Abe Cabinet once again denying evidence of coercion, prompting US Ambassador to Japan Thomas Schieffer to criticize the government's position.

As I've said before regarding soft power: difficult to measure, difficult to wield, and highly sensitive to the slightest change in perceptions. Between the ongoing disputes over whaling and the comfort women issue, I wouldn't be surprised if the BBC finds Japan to be slightly less popular next year.