THE
END OF SERVILITY
I
had held my opinion of Koizumi in reserve, until now:
that is, until he came out with the
stunning announcement that the so-called Peace Constitution
of 1951 – which prohibits Japan from having an army
– is "abnormal" and must be amended. For years, in
accordance with the mythology of Japanese war guilt, government
policy has been to deny that the "Self-Defense Force"
is an army, and indeed in most respects it is not. That
same myth has dictated a policy of servility and self-abasement
not only toward the US, but toward China. The recent
controversy over the visit of Taiwan's ex-President
caused turmoil in Tokyo: the Chinese were furious, and
demanded that the Japanese authorities deny Lee Teng-hui
a visa. Tokyo dithered for what seemed like weeks, until
finally granting him permission to come for medical treatment
– but not without apologizing, explaining, and backtracking
every five minutes. Given the "no army" clause of the
Japanese constitution (written on the back of an envelope
by one of MacArthur's underlings), how can you blame them?
After all, could a defenseless Japan really count
on the Americans to save them from a Chinese attack? Many
think not.
THE
CHRYSANTHEMUM AND THE SWORD
This,
then, is the official rationale behind the rearming of
Japan: as a deterrent against the alleged threat of Chinese
aggression. But every Japanese knows that the real threat
to their sovereignty is not in Beijing, but in Washington;
they know that their sovereignty and dignity are being
assailed and violated every day, not by Chinese soldiers
but by Americans – whose recreational activities
on the island of Okinawa have led to so many rapes, murders,
molestations, and other violent acts that I
can no longer keep count of them. I hasten to add
that these American soldiers are not representative, either
of their countrymen or their comrades-in-arms, but that
does nothing to ameliorate the burning resentment many
Japanese feel. Japan has been a conquered country all
these years, a province of the American Empire both geostrategically
and culturally. But Japanese rearmament changes the terms
of the equation: no longer a conquered people, the Japanese
are now on equal terms with their occupiers. The
Chrysanthemum has been reunited with the Sword.
THE
LAW OF POWER
What
this means is that the American occupation cannot continue
– for there can be only one armed force within the
boundaries of a single state. That is the first law of
power: a state must have a monopoly on the use of force
within a given geographical area. The old Japanese state
– a system with the Emperor at its core – ceased
to exist at the end of the war, and what grew up in its
place was not really an independent state, but a
US colony, occupied and administered by the so-called
MacArthur Regency, with the Emperor held hostage, so to
speak, a prisoner in a gilded cage who existed to legitimize
the rule of the American Shogun. The Japanese "governments"
of the past 50 years acquired all the trappings of a state,
including elections, political parties, a central bank,
a Prime Minister and a Cabinet, but in reality it was
all an elaborate game of make-believe, like some stylized
Noh
drama, a pretense performed for the benefit of Washington
– which could never admit to its postwar role as
the New Rome. Now that era has come to an end, and the
sun is rising on a new day: the first day of the second
half of the Showa
era, so
rudely interrupted by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and
the European colonial powers.
THE
COMING BREAK
Naturally,
events will not transpire all that quickly: we are, after
all, talking about Japan, where indirection is the rule
and passivity has been bred into the people as a result
of the occupation. The two armed forces, Japanese and
American, will co-exist for a while, albeit uneasily.
But soon – perhaps far sooner than anyone in Washington
now imagines – the request that the Americans downplay
and limit their presence will turn into a demand that
they leave – and what then?
ECONOMIC
LEGACY OF DEFEAT
Junichero
Koizumi represents the spirit of the new Japan: the
Japan that can and must say no to the policy of occupation
and subordination pursued by his predecessors for half
a century. But the reunion of the Chrysanthemum and the
Sword of the Samurais is not the only aspect of Japan's
necessary transformation. In abolishing the old political
system, and setting up a Western-style democracy in its
place, the conquering Americans also set up a New Deal-style
system of economic administration, a command economy modeled
on the Keynesian
vision that animated FDR's planners. With an official
interest rate hovering somewhere around zero percent,
Japan is the perfect illustration of the inherent problem
with massive bank-credit expansion as a solution to economic
problems. The Japanese banking system is plagued with
bad debts, and the cracks in the financial system have
already begun to appear: this is the legacy of Japan's
colonial bondage.
FREE
MARKETS CAN FREE JAPAN
But
if anyone can pull Japan out of this crisis, it is Prime
Minister Koizumi. He is a free-marketeer who clearly understands
the affliction at the heart of the economic malaise, if
not its origins, and he is pledged to go up against the
established interests: the state-privileged cartels who
have benefited from the hyper-inflation (being the first
to receive the newly-minted money in loans), the subsidized
and politically protected class of bureaucrats and "office
men" who have supplanted the entrepreneur and the samurai
as the dominant national archetypes. Koizumi opposes bailing
out the banks with government money, and has come out
for the privatization of the Japanese "post office" –
which is, in effect, the biggest of the banks, where a
major chunk of the national savings is ensconced. His
election as head of the Liberal Democratic Party –
which virtually ensures his election as Prime Minister
– points toward the revival of that previously moribund
party, long seen as the haven of hacks and dullards, the
bastion of the special interests who have profited from
Japan's ignominy as a conquered land.
BREAKING
THE MOLD
The
great problem of Japanese nationalism is that it has,
in the past, shown no understanding of economics. Koizumi
breaks the mold – and, because of that, may yet break
the chains that bind his nation. This is not a threat
to the legitimate national interests of the US: far from
it. A strong Japan is a much-needed counterweight to China,
and the weakness fostered by the occupation is a distortion
of the natural balance of power that would have occurred
if not for the US presence. The renewal of Japan is, however,
a threat to any nation – particularly a Western one
– that has the arrogance to believe that it must
dominate the region. Time to start thinking about bringing
the troops home, half a century after their victory –
better late than never.
