A
DIFFERENT DRUMMER
The
bureaucrats who staff the Japanese central government
are the deadliest enemies of the Koizumi reform movement:
appointed virtually for life, these palace eunuchs owe
their power to the preservation of the status quo, in
foreign as well as domestic policy. This means that,
in the Foreign Ministry, they are the enforcers of Japan's
subjugation, flunkies of the American overlord who bitterly
oppose any attempt by Japan to assert itself. They hate
Tanaka not only because she threatens their traditional
hegemony over government policy, but also because of
her Asia-centric worldview. The bureaucrats look to
Washington, because that is where their marching orders
are coming from: but Tanaka marches to a different drummer
. . . .
THE
LYNCH MOB GATHERS
In
a series of leaks, anonymous officials have revealed
the confidential content of Tanaka's private conversations
with top officials: remarks that are clearly meant to
caricature her as anti-American and pro-Chinese. As
the leading voice of an occupied Japan that would like
to stay occupied, Ashai
Shimbun gleefully cited Japanese government "officials"
as saying that Tanaka could cause a crisis in US-Japan
relations, and "furthermore, senior ministry officials
have concluded their boss is pro-China and anti-US."
This was the culmination of a full week of disclosures,
during which these same unnamed officials leaked the
alleged content of Tanaka's conversations with the foreign
ministers of Australia and Italy. She
was quoted as saying that President George W. Bush's
enthusiasm for the missile defense project was due to
"conservative people such as advisors to his father
when he was the president. I suspect there is influence
from his support groups such as oil industry people
in his homeground Texas." This set off a firestorm,
with newspaper editorials denouncing her as "erratic"
and "news" stories quoting one anonymous official as
saying that obviously the Foreign Minister has "mental
problems." All the usual American suspects chimed in
as well, with
Time magazine loutishly labeling her "The
Lady with the Big Mouth."
A
CASTLE FULL OF DEMONS
So
what's the big deal? After all, Tanaka was simply expressing
an opinion that is not at all unusual in this
country, and many would argue is simply a statement
of fact: that George W. is indeed surrounded and supported
by those corporate interests that will profit from construction
of the "Star Wars" missile defense system. In Japan,
however, such bluntness is revolutionary, and not only
on account of the Japanese reputation for extreme discretion.
As a protectorate of the US, Japan's subservience in
foreign affairs has been the given of its foreign policy
since the end of World War II. Indeed, it cannot be
said that Japan has even had a foreign policy distinguishable
from that of the Americans. With the appointment of
Tanaka to the foreign ministry, Japan's self-abasement
is now coming to an end: this is the meaning of the
struggle between Tanaka and what she called a "castle
full of demons" – the foreign ministry staffed
by officials who have been feeding anti-Makiko stories
to both the Japanese and the American media every
single day since she took office.
VERBAL
LANDMINES
The
latest
leak reports a conversation she allegedly had with
the German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer: according
to Mainichi Shimbun, Tanaka "hinted that Tokyo
should flex its independence more and not be bound by
the Japan-US Security Treaty," and quotes her as saying:
"Japan has been protected by an umbrella of nuclear
weapons under the Japan-US Security Treaty. . . . Japan
should be more independent." This is breathlessly reported
to be "Tanaka's latest verbal landmine," and is supposed
to be a great embarrassment. But is it?
THE
JAPAN THAT CAN SAY "NO!"
Back
in the 1960s, the renewal of the US-Japan Security Treaty
– the document that formalized and codified the terms
of the American military occupation – was the occasion
for riots that rocked Japan. In Okinawa, the presence
of US troops has become so onerous that the inhabitants
are rising up unanimously – with Tanaka's support
– demanding their exit, or at least a radical reduction.
Is the desire to be more independent really all that
radical, does it really discredit Tanaka as a
"loose cannon" out of her depth, as the denizens of
the "castle of demons" and their American masters have
been saying? I would argue no: that instead of
discrediting Tanaka, it merely burnishes her image as
an outspoken symbol of the new Japan – the Japan, as
Tokyo mayor Shintaro
Ishihara famously expressed it, That
Can Say "No!".
BAD
NEWS?
To
the colonial vassal who wrote the Mainichi piece,
the worst possible accusation against someone in the
government is that they have somehow incurred the displeasure
of the Americans. "Further bad news haunted the foreign
minister," we are told. "A high-ranking US official
poured cold water on her planned June visit to Washington
and talks with Secretary of State Colin Powell." It
is always "bad news" to an underling if a superior won't
grant them an audience – but think of how US envoy Richard
Armitage felt when he arrived in Tokyo to discover that
the Japanese Foreign Minister was indisposed and not
able to fit him into her schedule.
PAYBACK
TIME
It's
payback time, as far as the Americans are concerned.
When one realizes that the Foreign Ministry officials
anonymously dissing Tanaka in the media are just American
sock-puppets, the real picture begins to come into somewhat
clearer focus. While the US has been careful to avoid
making any meaningful statement on what is supposed
to be an internecine struggle within Japan, this gesture
says it all.
THE
REAL THREAT
While
in Japan the eunuchs skitter about, tut-tutting that
the Iron Lady has "psychological problems," in America
the pundits haughtily dismiss this Nipponese Amazon
as "bizarre," as Business Week characterized
her behavior, and a loud-mouthed "loose cannon," according
to Time. While the latter had a whole laundry
list of rather petty complaints, Business Week
was more precisely outraged at her snubbing of Armitage:
"She just wasn't up for a briefing about what is the
most controversial shift in U.S. defense strategy in,
oh, decades," spluttered
Brian Bremner, their "Eye on Japan" columnist. "And
when you are feeling rundown, who wants to talk to an
emissary from your biggest strategic partner on the
planet at a time when security threats to Japan from
China and North Korea are multifaceted?" But the main
threat to Japan is not a Chinese invasion, but an American
provocation that could catch them in the crossfire.
As for rising tensions on the Korean peninsula, who
is really responsible for exacerbating them? Is it Makiko
Tanaka, or is it the US – which has stopped the rapprochement
between North and South dead in its tracks, and is deaf
to the appeals of Seoul to take a softer line?
STRATEGIC
PARTNERS IN CONFLICT
It
isn't Chinese or North Korean soldiers who are raping
Japanese women and girls in Okinawa, going on crime
sprees and generally making life miserable for the inhabitants
of that tortured isle. It isn't the Chinese or the North
Koreans who have occupied Japanese soil for over half
a century, lording it over a disarmed and prostrate
former adversary and enriching collaborators at the
expense of ordinary folk. Where is the threat to Japan
– from Asia, or from the West?
IMPERIALIST
ECONOMICS
For
a long time Japan prospered from its subservience: or,
at least, some Japanese did. The zaibatsu
(state-privileged monopolies) grew fat on the spoils
of an export-driven economy feeding off the wide-open
American market (Japan's was allowed to stay closed),
while the rest of the population was kept thin with
ridiculously high prices for basic consumer items. The
whole system was financed with the cancerous growth
of unlimited bank credit expansion, and for a while
Japan's economy was the envy of the world: the Japanese
financed the spiraling US debt, and we used the land
of the rising sun as a forward base of military operations,
a key outpost of our Asian empire. But this system began
to break down when the Japanese credit bubble burst,
and the nation's banking system began to have serious
problems. This is the great reform that Koizumi faces:
undoing the domestic economic effects of the US occupation.
It is a task that the Westerners are supposed to approve
of – the Americans have good reason to be deathly afraid
that the Japanese will start selling off their American
investments – but when someone attempts to carry out
a similar reform in the realm of foreign policy … well,
that is a different matter altogether.
MARKET
NATIONALISM ON THE MARCH
I
have argued, in previous
columns on this
subject, that the Koizumi phenomenon – which amounts
to nothing less than a peaceful revolution for Japan
– is an expression of what I call market nationalism.
This is not unique to Japan, but is occurring in all
the developed countries, to some extent, in response
to the increasing military and political dominance of
the US in global affairs. It is a nationalism, in short,
that has learned the lesson of economics, a nationalism
that embraces the universality of the market but insists
on the particularity of its own cultural uniqueness
and national independence. A resurgent Japanese nationalism,
which refuses to accept the myth of Japanese war guilt
– and wants to reassert its national identity –
is much in evidence today: in the textbook
controversy, in the popular
culture, and in Makiko Tanaka's championing of an
independent foreign policy for Japan. Can America deal
with it?
HAVE
NO FEAR
It
is in our interests to do so, not only because a counterweight
to China is needed, but also because we don't have much
choice – and there is nothing, really, to fear. For
this is not a militaristic nationalism, but neither
is it pacifistic as a matter of high principle: it has
not forgotten the dire consequences of the expansionist
empire-building of the 1930s, which led to Japan's downfall,
but now it is also remembering the role of the West
in provoking and facilitating the triumph of Japanese
militarism. As America recalls the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor, and builds a new Washington memorial to
its war dead, the Japanese also reexamine the history
of the Pacific conflict as FDR's "back door" to getting
into the European war. The Japanese are reclaiming their
own history, and dignity, as a necessary corollary to
the renewal of their entire society. We can fight it,
or go with the flow, but of one thing we can be sure:
if we are supposed to be "strategic partners" with the
Japanese, then it must be on terms of equality – or
not at all.
GENDER
BENDER
As
related in today's
[Tuesday's] Los Angeles Times, when Makiko
Tanaka's older brother died, her politician father –
former prime minister Kakuei
Tanaka – transferred his expectations to her. "He
raised me almost as though I was his son," averred Makiko,
and the Times reports that he called his headstrong
daughter "a fighting cock, an unbroken horse and his
domestic opposition." We are further informed that when
she married "her father took her husband, Naoki, aside
and said: 'It's like you're marrying a man. If you're
expecting her to cook or iron for you, you'd better
forget it.'" It took a woman to get Japan up off her
knees, and stand up for the independence of the nation
– and that has made the corrupt and decadent Japanese
elites hate her all the more. Unless you're a Japanese
Foreign Ministry bureaucrat with an unlimited expense
account, or a US State Department official used to ordering
your Japanese subordinates around, the only possible
response to the rise of Makiko and the firestorm of
controversy surrounding her is: Go, Makiko, go!
