Let the hyperbole begin

Congress has passed House Resolution 121, the "comfort women resolution," by unanimous consent — there were no nays voiced, and there was no roll call vote. According to one of my trusted correspondents, Congressman Tom Lantos, a Holocaust survivor, introduced the legislation by suggesting that there is no statute of limitations on apologies for these crimes and that asking for this apology is not asking too much of Japan, a friend and ally. Said Lantos: "The true strength of a nation is tested when it is forced to confront the darkest chapters in its history. Will it have the courage to face up to the truth of its past, or will it hide from those truths in the desperate and foolish hope they will fade with time?"

H.Res. 121 is an exceedingly modest piece of legislation. Non-binding, it does not request that the administration take steps to pressure Japan by linking the issue up with another bilateral issue; it appeals to Japan's good conscience to do the right thing by history, to do its duty to ensure that its children are fully aware of their country's bloody past, a burden that must be carried by every country (as discussed in this post).

I have already documented some of the extreme rhetoric emanating from Japan's ultra-nationalists in advance of the resolution's passage, and that rhetoric will undoubtedly intensify in the coming days and weeks.

Non-Japanese critics of the resolution are vulnerable to the same rhetorical excesses as Japanese critics. Take this post by Matt at Liberal Japan, in which he asks, "Are we all Fascists these days? Imperialists?" Hyperbolic fulminations along these lines have devalued terms like Fascism and Imperialism to the point of being analytically useless; they are now little more than slurs.

Imperialism, Matt? Really? The US isn't occupying the Diet until the government apologizes. It isn't threatening to stop defending Japan, abandoning it to its fate, or slapping economic sanctions on Japan. The US Congress is making an appeal out of good conscience, from one democracy to another, for Japan to strive harder to ensure that the truth of Japan's past is not revised, relativized, or ignored — to ensure that Japanese children have a full appreciation of their country's wartime past. The time for debate about the hypocrisy of the US or whether it is within the duties of the Congress to pass such legislation is past; the resolution is on the books. H.Res. 121 is not the equivalent of the invasion of Iraq, Matt, but a simple piece of non-binding legislation that seeks historical justice, both because it's the right thing to do and because it will make Japan a better US ally.

This resolution's passage ought to mean the end of hysterical rhetoric about how the US Congress is bullying poor Japan. It won't, but it should. Instead, H.Res. 121 will no doubt find a prominent place on the list of wounds inflicted on Japan's precious self-esteem by the US.

For a review of this whole process and the resolution's implications, including its connection with US Asia policy, I strongly recommend this post by Mindy Kotler at The Washington Note.

Desperate to the end

The last day of campaigning is done, and tomorrow, Sunday, the voters will decide whether to punish the LDP and Komeito for the Abe cabinet's corruption, lapses, and policy failures and hand control of the Upper House of the Diet to the DPJ and other opposition parties.

(Find my predictions for the critical single-seat district campaigns here; my final notes here.)

I want to add an additional note on a theme that has emerged in the final week of the campaign. As election day has approached, the Abe cabinet's and its representatives have introduced foreign policy into the campaign in the form of North Korean policy. Perhaps not surprisingly, the LDP has borrowed a page from the 2004 Bush-Cheney reelection campaign, suggesting that an LDP defeat on Sunday will give comfort to Pyongyang. (Karl Rove keeping himself busy, perhaps?)

Here is Chief Cabinet Secretary Shiozaki on the hustings in Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture (from an Asahi article not online): "The most pleased with a loss in the election will be the DPJ. Perhaps number two will be North Korea. The abortion of the Abe line will send a mistaken message to North Korea." Shiozaki said something similar earlier this week, and Prime Minister Abe himself turned to the abductions issue as a basis for appealing to the voters. "If North Korea does not resolve this problem, it will not receive the acceptance of international society," he told voters in Ehime and Chiba prefectures. "We will, until the day that all abductees set foot on Japanese soil and are reunited with their families, strive to resolve this issue with an 'iron will.'"

Shiozaki's formulation — that voting against the LDP gives comfort to Japan's enemies — is particularly egregious, but the insertion of the abductions issue into the campaign at this late stage is a sign of LDP desperation in the face of what looks to be certain defeat and an indication of the extent to which the government has been on the defensive throughout the campaign. And I don't think it will work.

In fact, as AEI's Chris Griffin observes in an altogether sensible op-ed at the Washington Post, one reason why foreign policy is not a major point of contention in this election is that the differences between the LDP and the DPJ tend to be more a matter of degree than of kind. Unlike the differences between the LDP and the JSP during the cold war, when the JSP refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the US-Japan alliance and the constitutionality of the JSDF, the LDP and the DPJ largely agree on Japan's playing a more significant global role, with differing degrees of emphasis on the US versus the UN, for example. The overlap between the LDP and the DPJ also applies to North Korea and China policy, although the DPJ may not view the abductions issue in the same light that Prime Minister Abe does (discussed in this post).

Writes Griffin:

A vote against the LDP, however, is not a vote against the U.S.-Japan alliance. While many within the opposition party leadership may be skeptical of Abe's ambitions, they have chosen to focus the their campaign on such social issues as pension reform. So a defeat for Abe does not necessarily mean a repudiation of his agenda of constitutional reform and a stronger defense. And while Abe has made a stronger alliance a priority, both parties seek a healthy relationship with the United States.

(Griffin also questions the political wisdom of the timing of Congress's vote on the comfort women resolution, now scheduled for Monday, 30 July, even as he praises the resolution's "sentiments." Given that the vote will not be held until Tuesday Japan time, two days after the Upper House elections, I fail to see what the problem is. And if Japan has a problem with the vote being held so close to the elections, it has only itself to blame, given that at each step in the process Japanese officials and commentators have aggravated members of Congress, culminating in Ambassador Kato's letter to congressional leaders.)

Nevertheless, Sunday's election will not result in a drastic shift in policy, heightened rhetoric notwithstanding. If Abe survives, chastened, he will be ever more beholden to party leaders, not least among them former Prime Minister Mori — who took initial steps to placate the DPJ by appealing to the national interest, suggesting that there are many areas in which the DPJ and the LDP to cooperate following a DPJ victory, and that the parties should embrace a politics "for Japan." A chastened Abe more dependent on senior party leaders will be a more cautious Abe, ever more disinclined to pursue Koizumi-style structural reform. There will be efforts to calm rural voters, perhaps a new welfare initiative or two stemming from cooperation with the DPJ, and less talk of constitution revision, with the latter even more likely to vanish from the agenda in the event of Abe's being replaced by Fukuda or another less flashy candidate.

But it is an open question whether a cautious approach will be enough to calm the restive voters and undermine the momentum that the DPJ will take from the election in the event of an impressive victory.

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.

The white-hot rage of the ultra-nationalists

From the blog of Sakurai Yoshiko, newscaster and lady of the right, comes the text of her article in the 7 July issue of Shukan Daiyamondo concerning the comfort women resolution.

Hers is another contribution to the fury of Japanese ultra-nationalists that is spilled across the pages of Japan's weeklies and monthlies as the congressional resolution nears passage, but it is worth considering, because it illustrates the rage that is bubbling up to the surface. Perhaps this is what Ambassador Kato was referring to? Whatever the case may be, I wonder if Congress is aware of the fury it has sparked in certain corners of public opinion here, and whether Congress particularly cares.

In any event, after reiterating the "fact" of the US military setting up its own comfort women system during the occupation of Japan, which was included in the now infamous Washington Post ad to which Sakurai was a signatory, Sakurai wonders what is to be done about this resolution. Allow me to translate:

...What should Japan do to deal with this kind of trend in the US of ongoing political criticism of Japan under the flags of "human rights" and "women?" Many people say that it is good to be silent and let it pass, since there is no possibility of refutation.

But in the event of taking criticism contrary to the facts, isn't the foundation for mutual understanding making a rebuttal with accurate facts? Silence is acquiescence in the face of baseless attacks on the truth, and to not speak will continue to bring dishonor to all Japanese.

I must predict that if the comfort women resolution passes, this issue will not thereupon die, but rather give birth to a more serious state of affairs...

そのような米国で進行中の“人権”“女性”を掲げた日本批判の政治の潮流に、日本はどう対処すべきか。反論してもムダであるから、黙ってやり過ごすのがよいと多くの人が言う。

だが、事実に反する非難を受けた場合、正確な事実をもって反論するのが相互理解の基本ではないのか。沈黙は、根拠なき非難を事実として認めるものであり、日本人全員に、いわれなき汚名を着せ続けることだ。

慰安婦決議が成立すれば、問題はそこで終わるのではなく、さらに深刻な状況が生まれることも予測しなければならないだろう。

This is actually relatively polite, as far as responses to the comfort women resolution from Japan's ultra-nationalists go. But all the tell-tale signs are there. The certainty that if they just keep repeating their "facts" over and over again, the wool will be lifted from the eyes of those who have been misled; the posturing that leads Sakurai to claim to speak on behalf of all Japanese, who will be dishonored if this tiny non-binding resolution isn't crushed; the questioning of the motives of the US (see the scare quotes around human rights and women): these are standard tropes in the gallons of ink spilled against this resolution of which I'm certain not even one percent of Americans are aware. This is the ugly side of America's Japanese ally. The airing of arguments such as these do not invalidate the alliance by any means (yet). I certainly don't think that Sakurai and company speak for the Japanese people. But they're out there, in positions of importance, and there is not nearly enough opposition to them in Japan's marketplace of ideas.

Their success is a testament to the unresolved historical issues between Japan and the US, issues left untouched during the cold war for strategic reasons but which have metastasized into a comprehensive world view for these ultra-nationalists who are convinced that Japan has done its penance — for crimes it did not even commit! — and any suggestion to the contrary besmirches the honor of the Japanese people and must be answered with righteous rage.

For my part, I tend to be highly skeptical of people who are as insistent as Sakurai Yoshiko and her compatriots that they have The Facts and everyone else is ignorant or malicious, because it is a world view that leaves no room for even the slightest possibility of those Facts might be wrong and that those who disagree might be doing so simply out of devotion to the truth, not devotion to an ideology.

Do I think, as Steve Clemons does, that the prominence of these ultra-nationalists in Japan is a sign of a return to the 1930s for Japan? No, not at all. I don't think the Japanese people have a sustained, programmatic interest in these conservative grudges, if the fate of constitution revision as the central focus of the Upper House elections is any indication. Rather, the danger they pose is to the alliance with the US, because enough of these tantrums and the US government may eventually tire of relying heavily on Japan as a partner in East Asia and look to alternative arrangements as a means of defending its interests in the region (engendering no small amount of instability).

Meanwhile, if you really want to see an example of the frustrated, dare I say impotent outrage of the ultra-nationalists, you would do well to read Takayama Masayuki's essay "Master" in the 19 July issue of Shukan Shincho (I am indebted to a trusted correspondent for sending along a translation of this essay).

The time for choosing approaches

North Korea has indicated that in order for the six-party talks to go forward, the US will have to remove North Korea from its list of state supporters of terrorism. That demand, of course, is aimed squarely at US-Japan cooperation on the abductions issue, because Japan is adamant that so long as North Korea fails to account for its abductions of Japanese citizens, it must continue to wear the scarlet letter of state sponsor of terrorism.

Given that the Japanese government has indicated that it will not compromise — no progress on abductions, then no cooperation in energy support — to advance the denuclearization talks, given that Prime Minister Abe has no room to maneuver on the abductions issue, the choice that must be made increasingly is the US government's to make.

I've recently resolved that I'm going to read Abe's book from start to finish, however interminably boring or weird it might be. One thing I have learned from this reading (I'm about halfway through) is that however important I thought the abductions issue was to him before, I underestimated. The abductions issue is central to understanding Abe Shinzo's rise to power, and essential to understanding how he thinks of himself.

Talking about his efforts to raise awareness of the issue early in his career as a politician, he strikes a Churchillian note, talking about how even within the LDP there was little awareness of the issue. Abe and his coterie were but a small minority, crying out against the prevailing consensus on North Korea. But they persevered, and now they are in control of Japanese foreign policy. There will be no talk of aid to North Korea without resolution of this issue. This issue, which is insignificant to every country involved in the six-party talks except Japan, is the undisputed heart of this government's view of the North Korea problem; missiles and nuclear weapons raise public awareness, but apparently the government considers resolving those problems secondary to the abductions problem.

If an actual agreement with North Korea is possibly — or more realistically, a status quo that will stabilize the Korean peninsula until the death of Kim Jong Il and the end of the DPRK — should the US balk on the basis of the Japanese position on abductions? It would be one thing if the Japanese government was holding back simply out of concern that Pyongyang's word could not be taken in good faith and thus the six-party talks could not be expected to secure Japan. That's an entirely reasonable position, and susceptible to change in the event that North Korea actually made good faith efforts to comply (however unlikely).

But Japan has put the US in the position of having to choose between pursuing an agreement on denuclearization, however chimerical, and "abandoning" its ally. This at the same time that Japan already feels betrayed by the US thanks to those — this phrase courtesy of an article in this month's issue of Will — "anti-Japan fascists" in the US Congress and their comfort women resolution. So yes, Ambassador Kato, the alliance may be set to suffer, entirely from self-inflicted wounds that were foreseeable and preventable. But then, why would an ambassador want to try to foresee and prevent bilateral difficulties? I cannot say that I'm surprised by the overlap between the six-party talks and the comfort women resolution (I said as much here) — but that makes this whole fiasco that much more aggravating, because it was so eminently foreseeable.

The reality is that the alliance is not, in fact, under attack from a two-pronged offensive waged by Chris Hill and Mike Honda; rather, it is suffering, perhaps has always been suffering, from manic depression, swinging between ecstatic highs ("the best ever") and mournful lows, because it has never been normalized, because Japan has been protected for so long by friends in Washington. Now those friends have retreated from power.

The reality is that the US is doing what it thinks is right in both cases. In a normal alliance, there would be no problem explaining that and having a discussion about how to coordinate interests or, if necessary, how exactly to agree to disagree. Instead at each possible moment when the US and Japan could have discussed this, the governments fell back on tired rhetoric about how strong the alliance is today. So the US must also bear some blame for this mess, not for the comfort women resolution, but for laziness in failing to ensure that Japan understands American needs in the six-party talks and in failing to prevent Tokyo from overreacting to the congressional resolution.

But Japan better wake up soon, because I have a pretty good idea of the choice the US is going to make if a deal emerges that Hill feels confident bringing back to Washington as a trophy. He was quoted in Asahi (article linked above) as saying, "If there's denuclearization, anything is possible."

Please explain, ambassador

Ambassador Kato Ryozo, facing the passage of the non-binding comfort women resolution by the House of Representatives, has reportedly sent a "blunt" letter to the House leadership warning about "lasting and harmful effects on the deep friendship, close trust and wide-ranging cooperation our two nations now enjoy."

(The Washington Post article breaking the story does not note whether he explained what harmful effects he foresees. If anyone has the text of this letter, or knows where to find it, I would be much obliged.)

Assuming that Ambassador Kato has not added any details to his dire warnings about how this resolution will harm the US-Japan relationship, I renew the question I asked when Ambassador Kato tried to scare the House Foreign Affairs Committee into voting against the resolution: is that a prediction or a threat?

As I noted then, Americans, public and elite alike, are generally sanguine about the state of the US-Japan relationship, and US elites seem to have no problem separating this thorny historical issue from the relationship. So it seems that if there is to be trouble after the passage of this resolution, it will not be emanating from the US. That leaves Japan.

So, Ambassador Kato, which is it? Are you warning that the Japanese government considers this an unfriendly act and will respond in kind? Or are you warning that it will inflame Japanese public opinion and undermine public support for the US-Japan relationship? Both are manageable, indeed, avoidable, if only Tokyo were capable of some perspective on this issue, instead of immediately becoming defensive, attempting to squash the resolution by whatever means necessary, and making dire predictions about worsening US-Japan relations (it must be the fault of those Democrats in Congress!).

Whatever the case may be, if there is one lesson that Americans should draw from this episode, in combination with the Kyuma affair, it is that clearly the US-Japan relationship has a long way to go before it can be called "normal" — and that there are plenty of history issues between the US and Japan that have yet to be properly confronted.

Can anyone say straw man?

Komori Yoshihisa, defender of Japan's honor Sankei Shimbun's editor at large based in Washington, has "exposed" the alleged activities of Chinese-American groups in putting the screws on House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (D-CA-12) and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA-8) to get them both to support rapid passage of the comfort women resolution.

Komori argues that Lantos, who was supposedly content with Prime Minister Abe's remarks during his visit to Washington in late April, has changed his mind due to pressure from Asian-American groups, including the Global Alliance for Preserving the History of World War II in Asia and Chinese Americans for Democracy in Taiwan. He seemingly bases his argument on an article from the Bay City News Service in early June, in which Ignatius Ding, executive vice president of the aforementioned Global Alliance, complained about being ignored by Lantos and Pelosi, and that if Lantos did not change his course, "it would be time for new representation" in California 12, which the article notes is 33% Asian-American.

That is a very thin basis for claiming that the passage of the bill in Lantos's committee and its likely passage by the whole House is the product of the activism of Asian-American groups.

First, what is the basis for thinking that Lantos, who was re-elected with 76% of the vote in 2006 and has never be re-elected with lower than 66% of the vote, is concerned that an interest group has threatened to challenge him next year? Even assuming that Asian-American voters united to unseat Lantos, would that be enough to remove him?

Second, and more insulting, why does Komori not even entertain the possibility that perhaps Lantos came to see the merit in passing the resolution after a bunch of Abe's cronies chose to remind Washington why the resolution needed to be considered in the first place?

It is simply too easy a dodge to point at Asian-American activist groups and blame them for what Congress does, and it is fallacious to argue that Congress and its members are simply cat's paws at the mercy of lobbyists. H.Res.121 passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee by a 39-2 margin, with Congressmen Paul and Tancredo, the lone dissenting votes, opposing on constitutional grounds, not out of sympathy with Japan. H.Res.121 now has 151 co-sponsors from both parties and from all parts of the country. Are there some members who have signed on to this resolution because it is a risk-free way of (potentially) gaining the support of Asian-American voters? Sure. Is it all a conspiracy by Asian-American groups, acting in cahoots with Seoul, Beijing, and Pyongyang, to turn the US against Japan (a Manchurian resolution, in other words)? I, for one, am skeptical of this argument, which has been advanced in one form or another all across the non-Japanese Japan blogosphere. (Try here and here to start.) As hard as it is to believe, maybe members of Congress actually think that "Japanese public and private officials have recently expressed a desire to dilute or rescind the 1993 statement by Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono on the 'comfort women', which expressed the Government's sincere apologies and remorse for their ordeal."

Maybe, just maybe, Japan has yet to make proper amends from its crimes, and that saying so does not necessarily make one a Japan basher. While at one point in this process it was reasonable to ask whether Congress should be sitting in judgment of history, now that the H.Res.121 has been passed on to the full House and waits in the pipeline, that question is moot.

Like it or not, Congress will consider this resolution — and if it must, I would rather it act on the side of historical justice than not act and shield the revisionists, relativists, and outright deniers of Imperial Japan's systematic crimes against its neighbors.

Learning to be self-reliant?

If I could draw, I would have drawn something exactly like this cartoon in today's Yomiuri:


The caption on this cartoon reads, "Troubles at home, worries in America," Abe's dual American "worries" being the looming comfort women resolution and Christopher Hill's nuclear bargaining.

It didn't need to be this way, did it? As I wrote last week, the confluence of the North Korea nuclear question and the comfort women issue is largely a product of the blundering of the Japanese government, which has failed to appreciate how the mood in Washington has changed and act accordingly. Instead, at every juncture Shinzo has relied upon his buddy George's promises, without asking what those promises are worth when Foggy Bottom is running North Korea policy and the Congress — riled by Japanese revisionism on comfort women — does not share the president's sanguine views of Abe's empathy (and I'm sure it doesn't appreciate being called a tool of China).

The Abe government is right that the practical impact of this resolution will be limited; the foundation of the relationship is sound, and, as noted Tuesday, both the American public and American elites are content with the relationship. It's nothing short of amazing that even with a report emanating from the Bank of International Settlements noting that the yen's decline is "anomalous," Congress is more concerned about comfort women, and on monetary matters has directed its ire at China.

The importance of this episode is, rather, in the intangible impact on thinking in Japan. Relations between states, like relations between people, is a learning process. States learn what to expect from others, especially allies, and begin to build upon these expectations. Japan has come to expect a US that will refrain from criticizing its most important partner "bar none." It has relied upon a network of friends to ensure that this understanding remained in place, particularly after Japan was subject to all manner of American criticism in the early 1990s. (Robert Angel's 1996 introduction to the Japan lobby remains especially useful in illustrating how this works.) But now, with Congress's digging into Japan's past and the administration bereft of friends, the old understanding seems to be under threat.

How will Japan respond? Defensively, with alarm that it is being betrayed and abandoned by its supposed "ally"? That is how Amaki Naoto views recent events in US-Japan relations. He connects the comfort women resolution, Christopher Hill's recent statement about a peaceful framework among four countries, Japan excluded, and — citing a question asked by my boss in the Upper House foreign relations committee — Admiral Keating's remarks about aircraft carriers while in China in May to suggest that the US is not Japan's ally. He writes: "As the above-mentioned sequence of events makes clear, the US will never see Japan as an equal ally...Conservatives, nationalists, left-wing ideologues, and pacifists, as well as the people as a whole, are beginning to find further subordination to the US unfavorable. The problem is that after achieving autonomy and independence from the US, how will Japan ensure its security?"

The question is the extent to which this kind of thinking has taken hold among Japanese elites and the Japanese people — and the extent to which it could take hold in the midst of the aforementioned "betrayals." I cannot answer that, but I suspect it is more prevalent than perhaps Washington realizes.

So here we are: because Japan is incapable of dealing with criticism, and because the US does not particularly care that Japan is incapable of dealing with criticism, the future of the US-Japan relationship is murky, and will only get murkier as Japanese elites begin to assume that the US is not especially concerned about Japan's interests.

"No comment" — too little, too late?

The comfort women resolution has passed the House Committee on Foreign Affairs by a vote of 39 to 2. It now moves on to the full House, where Speaker Pelosi has suggested it will be considered in mid-July, conveniently before the Upper House elections.

The Abe government's response: no comment. Adhering to the sensible position that the government will not comment on resolutions in the legislatures of other countries, Chief Cabinet Secretary Shiozaki said, "Since this will not truly shake relations between the US and Japan, hereafter absolutely nothing changes."

Now why could the Japanese government not have said that six months ago, and stuck to it? This is a textbook case of shutting the barn door long after the horses have broken out and gone stampeding across the countryside.

Meanwhile, it seems that Ambassador Kato's gloomy pronouncements about the impact of the resolution were completely overblown, and scared no one into voting against the resolution. How much Japanese taxpayer money has already been sunk into the campaign to see this resolution destroyed? And — despite the official "no comment" — how much remains to be spent in the next two weeks?

Whatever the appropriateness of Congress deliberating on this issue, there are much bigger questions now. This episode has been important in revealing how thinking about the relationship differs between Washington and Tokyo. Congress has never been particularly concerned about hurting Japan's feelings, and of late the White House seems particularly disinclined to defend Japan. (But why should it? Is there another US ally that is incapable of handling criticism from the US government?) Meanwhile, the Abe government and its sympathizers, acting out of a mixture of pride, arrogance, and the absolute certainty that they have "The Facts" on their side have grossly overreacted to this issue, clearly leading some in Washington to wonder just who exactly the US is dealing with in Tokyo. As such, how can the alliance survive if one party expects love to be blind, and the other is beginning to take a closer look at its partner and noticing imperfections that were ignored in the first blush of romance?

Maybe it's time for George and Shinzo to have a little chat about where this relationship is headed. Taking a break from each other? Seeing other people? It seems that's what Abe is doing, anyway.

Is that a prediction or a threat?

For the second time in the past week, the Japanese media has noted concern that the comfort women resolution will worsen US-Japan relations.

Last week, Kato Ryozo, Japan's ambassador to the US, warned, "This resolution, which is not grounded in objectivity, is not good for US-Japan relations."

Now Mainichi reports that in New York on Monday, on the eve of the scheduled passage of the resolution in the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, a group of Japanese-American leaders expressed their concerns about the resolution. Irene Hirano, head of the Japanese American National Museum, is quoted as saying, "When relations between the two countries worsen, the first to feel its effects are Japanese-Americans."

Both reports strike me as drastically out of proportion to reality. How exactly will relations worsen? What will be the practical impact of this resolution? Will the US somehow be less reluctant to cooperate with Japan on security? Will the US somehow be less inclined to engage in trade negotiations with Japan? No, the problem does not seem to be on the American side, which seems to recognize that allies can disagree without undermining an otherwise close relationship. In fact, MOFA conducted a poll of the American public and American elites in February and March this year, measuring the extent to which each group thought US-Japan relations were good. The survey found that 67% of respondents from the population at large thought US-Japan relations were good, while 86% of elite respondents answered in the affirmative. This was, of course, around the time that the comfort women issue blew up. And yet an overwhelming majority of elites surveyed still felt confident in the health of the US-Japan relationship.

Hence my question in the title. When Ambassador Kato talks of the resolution worsening US-Japan relations — in the face of overwhelming US contentment with the state of the relationship — is he making a threat, hinting at a more combative turn in Japan's stance in the relationship? Or is he making a prophecy as to how his compatriots will react to their government's being criticized by the US Congress? It seems to me that instead of assuming that the resolution will worsen relations, it is appropriate to ask whether Congress's passage of the resolution will worsen US-Japan relations, and if so, how and why. And if relations are to worsen as a result of Japanese defensiveness, then it is appropriate to consider how Japan can become less susceptible to overreacting in the face of relatively insignificant turbulence like the comfort women resolution.

Confluence of issues

It seems that in the aftermath of "The Facts" advert in the Washington Post, the House Foreign Affairs committee is prepared to move forward (Hat tip: Japan Probe) with the Honda resolution on the comfort women issue — and that there is something to the news emanating from Korean sources that Vice President Cheney in particular was unhappy with it.

At the same time, North Korea, having received its frozen funds, is reportedly ready to move forward on freezing the nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and welcome IAEA inspectors — moves that Assistant Secretary of State Chris Hill reportedly greeted with some enthusiasm.

And so here we are: at the same time that North Korea has signaled its readiness to move forward with the agreement, tension over the lingering Honda resolution — and Japan's clumsy reaction to it — is rising. This is the kind of confluence of events for which Pyongyang has no doubt been waiting. The time is approaching when the US will have to choose between sticking with Japan on the abductions issue and dealing with North Korea in pursuit of an elusive nuclear agreement (which will most likely be unable to achieve anything more than a nuclear freeze, and even that will not come cheap). With Japan lacking guardians within the Bush administration — and now having angered the one significant figure (Cheney) who could possibly resist Hill on Japan's behalf — the coming weeks will be essential.

It seems to me that we're seeing the product of a series of Japanese diplomatic mistakes: holding back from wielding its influence due to excessive emphasis on the abductions issue; failing to anticipate the extent to which the US is hungry for a "victory" in the six-party talks, no matter how illusory; and arrogantly thinking that Washington would be indifferent to statements intended to relativize or otherwise revise the historical record on comfort women.

As a result the Honda Resolution has gone from being on life support — on hold until after the Upper House elections or buried for good — to being rushed through the Foreign Affairs committee and put to the whole House before the end of June, just as the US looks ready to move forward, alongside China, Russia, and South Korea, in reaching an agreement with North Korea.

If Tokyo thought Chris Hill's agreement in Berlin was shocking, it ain't seen nothing yet. And this time there may fewer voices in Washington reminding the administration to be mindful of Japan's interests. Instead, we may find more people echoing the sentiments of that Washington Post editorial from March: why should we worry about your abductees when you refuse to acknowledge the victims of the Imperial Army's abductions.

Brave new alliance?

Korea's Chosun Ilbo reports that the US government — both Congress and the White House — are not pleased by the ad published in the Washington Post signed by Japanese legislators that lays out "the facts" of the comfort women issue (previously discussed here). While the Chosun Ilbo relies on an unnamed source in Washington for this story, which means that it could be a leak designed to embarrass both the US and the Japanese governments, if there is truth to this story, it is a significant example of where the US-Japan alliance stands in the final years of the Bush administration.

Namely, the Japan handlers are gone. There is no one left in the administration to coddle Japan, to protect it from critics; if Japanese legislators want to argue with Congress in the pages of America's newspapers, they will not be shielded from their detractors by the White House. If anything, it seems that with the departure of members of the chinichi-ha (the "know Japan faction") the Bush administration simply has lost patience with the foot-dragging, excuse-making Japanese government, particularly concerning provocative statements by prominent Japanese figures (both public and private) on history issues, which complicate Washington's efforts to maintain stability in the region.

As Robert Dujarric argues in an op-ed in today's Asahi, the end of dependence on Washington Japan handlers can only be a good thing. For Japan, becoming a "normal" country ought to mean not being shielded from the consequences of its words and deeds — but it should also mean that public disagreements are normal, part of the ebb and flow of alliance relations and not a sign that the end of the alliance is nigh. (And it should also mean a Japan less wedded to the Republican Party.)

If the White House is actually unhappy with the ad in the Washington Post, this might be a good test for the new, post-chinichi ha alliance, the beginning of a period of benign neglect in which Japan is treated like — and acts like — other major US allies. As Dujarric writes, "Japan should recognize its own importance for the US, and not worry over every change in personnel. Can anyone imagine the British Foreign Office worrying about a change of deputy secretary of state or National Security Council staffer?"

In other words, not a divorce, just a new sense of maturity in the alliance. Every dispute need not be a crisis, every disagreement need not cause alarm over a growing rift in the Pacific. The US seems ready (or readier) for this kind of relationship; for all the talk about independence, is Japan ready?

The nationalism question, revisited yet again

Although the comfort women resolution appears to be on hold until after Japan holds Upper House elections next month, the waters have been roiled by a full-page advert in the Washington Post taken out by a bipartisan group of Japanese legislators, as well as journalists and commentators (including Abe confidante Okazaki Hisahiko) laying out "The Facts" on the comfort women issue. (The ad is available here, courtesy of Occidentalism.)

At the same time, a group of legislators led by former LDP member (and postal rebel) Hiranuma Takeo, who also signed the Wapo ad, has protested to China that it should remove photos from war museums that distort the past and defame Japan.

Ampontan has addressed both these acts of "assertiveness," arguing that the comfort women issue reflects worse on Japan's neighbors and the US Congress than on Japan, and that Japan is rightfully standing up to China in demanding changes to China's war museums.

I have written about my unease about the US Congress demanding an apology on this issue from Japan before, but that should not be taken as an endorsement of the position that Japan has apologized enough and we should all start paying attention to China's wrongs, instead of Japan's. As I have written before, Japanese governments may have apologized before, but the contemporary Japanese right — the political and in some cases familial descendants of the figures who led Japan to war — has never apologized for the war. Through various indiscreet comments made by Japanese conservatives, including the current prime minister in his younger days, it is clear that to them the worst thing about the war was that Japan lost. How that is consistent with former Prime Minister Murayama's apology is beyond me. The leaders who apologized before were those who thought that Japan was right to lose the war and were proud of Japan's unique pacifist identity (or were otherwise insincerely repeating what their predecessors had said).

It does not take much effort to see why Chinese, Koreans, and certain sections of the public in Australia and the US might have a problem with a Japanese prime minister who has never properly expressed remorse for Japan's colossal historical crimes and yet at the same time talks about abandoning Article 9 and the postwar regime built around it — abandoning the constitutional provision that has served as a mark of Cain, showing the world (and reminding Japan) of its bloody past.

The question is not a matter of resurgent militarism; as Benedict Anderson, author of Imagined Communities, said in an interview in the July issue of Ronza (my translation), "During the first phase of globalization, in the first half of the twentieth century, Japan's response to globalization was to commence invasions, starting with Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula, and Manchuria, and finally annexing the various countries of Asia. However, this kind of thing will likely not happen again. In theory, one can imagine war between Japan and China. However, now the act of a victorious country's seizing a defeated country is nonsense. Until the Second World War, the two countries had mutual, violent animosity that could be expressed in war, but now that does not apply."

Rather, it is a question of historical justice. Regardless of the questionable legitimacy of the Tokyo trials, regardless of what Japan suffered, regardless of what the other imperial powers did or did not do, Japan committed egregious acts of violence against its neighbors. It is not up to Japan to dictate when the wounds it inflicted upon its neighbors and their citizens have healed. And denying or relativizing Japan's actions only rubs salt into the open wounds of its victims.

Yes, China has historical issues of its own with which to grapple. Mao's crimes were monstrous, and that his visage can still be found all over China is deeply unsettling. But guess what? Mao's crimes were against the Chinese people. The Chinese people will one day have a serious reckoning with their country's history during the twentieth century, but that is a matter for the Chinese. And so with the Koreans. Between Japan, Korea, and China, it seems to me that only one has launched a massive war of aggression against the whole region in the past century — and has the responsibility to show sincere remorse for its crimes and to not make excuses for what happened.

The question of Japan's making a proper account and atoning for its wartime behavior has nothing to do with placating the Chinese and Korean governments, who for reasons of their own will not be placated by Japanese apologies. Nationalism and the attendant historical sensitivities will be a part of the landscape of Northeast Asia for decades to come, because vigorous, rising powers shape their histories to flatter their contemporary aspirations. No bilateral or trilateral panel of historians is going to overcome the urge to present history in a light that flatters oneself and makes one's rivals look bad.

No, Japan's historical reckoning is for its own sake, to clean out its wartime closet once and for all.

So what Ampontan sees as Japan's standing up for itself, I see a country for which pride and the redemption of honor take priority over historical justice — and I see a country that is, as of yet, unfit for the global leadership after which it lusts.

Abe in Washington, day one

Apropos of US Asia policy over the past several years, Prime Minister Abe's arrival in Washington was overshadowed by the Senate's passage of a war spending bill that includes a withdrawal plan -- entirely consistent with the US government's "Iraq, Iraq, Iraq" foreign policy.

While discussions between Bush and Abe over cheeseburgers and apple pie at Camp David on Friday will be unaffected by the bill, the attention Washington might have paid to questions about the future of the US-Japan alliance will most likely not be forthcoming.

In any event, prior to the low-key dinner at the White House on Thursday night, Abe met with a bipartisan group of congressional leaders, where, of course, the comfort women issue was raised -- prompting Abe to express his apologies once again both as an individual and as prime minister. Interestingly, the Sankei Shimbun reports that Tom Lantos (D-CA-12), chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said, "It is fitting that Japan should become a great power even in the area of security. To accomplish this, I strongly support Prime Minister Abe's policy of constitution revision." This is a good reminder that on the US-Japan alliance, there is a broad bipartisan consensus supporting bilateral security cooperation.

His schedule also included visits to Arlington National Cemetery and the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, where he met with veterans wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And, of course, Abe Akie and Laura Bush toured Mount Vernon, prompting Steve Clemons to speculate on how Bill Clinton would handle these duties if Hillary Clinton is elected president.

Does any of this mean anything? Arguably no. Abe's genuflections to congressional leaders might defuse some of the tension surrounding the comfort women issue -- although this op-ed co-authored by former House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Henry Hyde in the Washington Times (hat tip: Shisaku) suggests that the vein of opposition from the right, due to the influence of veterans of the Pacific theater, is deeper than Democratic initiation of the resolution would suggest.

Meanwhile, on North Korea, is Abe going to be able to reverse the "Bush shock"? Is another reminder of the plight of Japan's abductees going to make any difference for the US position? And are the two governments really capable of following through on last year's agreement on the realignment of the US military presence in Japan?

I do not anticipate these issues to be resolved at Friday's summit at Camp David or at next week's 2 + 2 meeting of foreign and defense ministers and secretaries. When looking at US-Japan relations over the past two decades, at least on the US side the principals at the Pentagon and Foggy Bottom mattered relatively little, except as sponsors of their subordinates' work on the alliance.

The sub-cabinet officials -- the assistant and deputy assistant secretaries -- holding Asia and Japan portfolios have been far more important. With Chris Hill the most prominent of the sub-ministerial Asia hands and Richard Lawless's departure pending, alliance matters are of secondary importance within Asia policy (which is itself of secondary or tertiary importance in US foreign policy as a whole). Commitment from President Bush, together with Prime Minister Abe, might be able to create an environment within which sub-cabinet officials could discuss the alliance's future in more concrete terms -- but that commitment is unlikely to be forthcoming, and even if it was, the personnel lineup at State, Defense, and the NSC does not favor the alliance.

I will reserve final judgment until the joint statement is released Friday, but I have no expectations for dramatic change. The alliance is on cruise control, and cruise control means drift.

UPDATE: Speaking of personnel, the Yomiuri Shimbun reports that Victor Cha, director for East Asian affairs (including Japan, the Koreas, Australia, and New Zealand) at the National Security Council, will be leaving the administration and returning to Georgetown. The Yomiuri's take is that this is yet another blow to the influence of North Korea hawks in the administration and a victory for the "dialogue faction." Of course, the gap between the US and Japanese negotiating positions on North Korea has grown as the influence of the hawks in Washington has declined.

I wonder who the administration will find to serve in this post for the remainder of the term, not an insignificant span of time by any means. (Although it's hard to believe that the Bush administration still has more than twenty months before it expires.) As with the departure of Richard Lawless, Japan and the Koreas will be watching closely as to who succeeds Cha.

I love the smell of nuance in the morning

Robert Koehler of The Marmot's Hole writes of a talk by Park Yu-ha, a Korean professor of Japanese literature, at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, in which she argued that Koreans are also to blame for the comfort women system.

And hence my problem with the congressional resolution condemning Japan and only Japan. History is more complicated than "good guys" versus "bad guys," and the whitewashing of history that would result from simply blaming Japan and moving on is little different from the whitewashing of history by Japanese nationalists.

In other words, let historians do their jobs.

Comfort women, not on the agenda; how about drift?

So reports Jiji regarding the meeting between President Bush and Prime Minister Abe scheduled for the end of this month during Japan's Golden Week holidays.

This is not altogether surprising; despite Ambassador Schieffer's voicing concerns about Abe's response to the congressional comfort women resolution (mentioned in this post), I would be shocked if the issue was taken up by more senior administration officials, especially given the state of relations between the administration and the Democratic Congress. If anything, I would not be surprised if the US sends a new ambassador to Japan in the aftermath of Abe's visit.

The agenda, according to Chief Cabinet Secretary Shiozaki, will focus largely on security issues in the Asia-Pacific region. Without knowing more details about the agenda, I assume that the summit will be more or less boilerplate about the importance of the US-Japan alliance to the region, much like Vice President Cheney's visit to Japan in February, rather than frank and forthright discussion of the sources of the friction that has emerged between the allies since Prime Minister Abe took office.

As regular readers of this blog know, I am concerned about the clear signs of drift in the US-Japan alliance that have presented since former Prime Minister Koizumi visited Washington (and Graceland) last summer. The only cure for drift is sustained engagement by the senior leaderships of both countries, from the sub-cabinet level up to the chief executives and back down. I fear, however, that the Bush administration, under siege at home and abroad and lacking Japan experts in its midst, is inadequately prepared to dedicate itself to pursuing more open, constructive political cooperation with Japan -- and the Abe Cabinet, between its plummeting popularity and a general laxness in its approach to the US-Japan alliance, seems hardly capable of picking up the slack.

Accordingly, in the face of the challenges of a fluid regional security environment, the region's most significant security partnership -- anchor of the US position in East Asia since the end of World War II -- appears powerless.

I hope I'm wrong. I hope there's strength yet. But if President Bush and Prime Minister Abe -- and, more importantly, the US and Japanese foreign and defense ministers, in the 2 + 2 meeting following the summit -- do not have frank and open discussions about the evolving regional security environment, about approaches to the emergence of China, and about differences between the US and Japanese positions in the six-party talks (if they make it to the end of the month), my fears may well be justified.

Why Japan is losing friends

The Jiji wire service reports that the minister responsible for public relations at Japan's embassy in Washington has called out the Washington Post for its "mistakes" and "not understanding sufficiently" the positions of Prime Minister Abe and the Japanese government on the comfort women question in its recent editorial on the issue, discussed here.

I suppose an official response to the Post's strongly critical editorial is a matter of course, but, at the same time, Japan's behavior throughout this whole process has made it difficult for American friends of Japan to defend Japan publicly. I have less of a problem with Japan's lobbying -- discussed in Harper's in October -- because Japan was simply playing the same game as pro-resolution activists. My problem is bigger, not only Japan's maddening inability to accept its historical crimes, but its inability to understand -- and to empathize with -- the victims of those crimes and appreciate that people all over the world, not just Koreans and Chinese, want Japan to face its past forthrightly. Once again, I don't think that the US Congress should be the vehicle of Japan's reconciliation with history, but opposing this resolution should not excuse Japan's behavior.

As such, I'm pleased that Kono Yohei -- author of the "Kono Statement" in question -- has criticized Abe and other "comfort women" deniers. Hair-splitting about historical crimes is almost worse than denying them outright, as it is an insidious way of diverting discussion away from questions of responsibility for wrongdoing (cf. the debate regarding the number of people killed in Nanking).

So, Mr. Abe, enough about whether or how coercion was involved: Japan was wrong. And so with the larger question of war guilt. Questions of Japanese victimhood at the hands of American strategic bombing (including atomic bombing), whether Japan was just engaging in the same practices as European empires, whether the US goaded Japan into war, or whether the International Military Tribunal for the Far East was simply meting out victor's justice, while relevant and interesting questions in their own right, are of secondary importance. It is time for a Japanese prime minister to make a full and unequivocal apology for all of Japan's wartime crimes and to issue a call to the Japanese people that a full and open reckoning with history is necessary. I don't think, however, that Abe will be that politician.

And that is why Japan is facing a US government less willing to indulge Japan as it did in the past. Consider that even the Bush administration, perceived to be particularly close with Japan (although less so now that certain officials have left), is now on record criticizing the Abe Cabinet for its ambiguous response to the congressional resolution. The relationship is changing, and if Tokyo thinks that the US government is going to shield it from critics (and enemies) forever, it is sorely mistaken.