Crossing Swords in Japan
BERGER, MICHAEL
TO ARM OR NOT TO ARM Crossing Swords in Japan BY MICHAEL BERGER Tokyo Pressure from the Bush Administration for increased Japanese participation in the attempt to liberate Kuwait has...
...Still, I have horrible memories," hesays...
...Earlier this year, the Prime Minister did succeed in using his good relationship with President Bush to help pressure Parliament into approving a series of measures aimed at easingU.S.- Japanese trade friction...
...That means units are sent in after aconflict is over...
...Mymemory is of pain—the pain hunger creates in your stomach...
...Hiro Takeshita, a 65-year-old consultant, feels that sending troops to the Gulf would beakind of retribution...
...Kiyoaki Kikuchi, a former Japanese ambassador to the UN who is now abusiness adviser, criticized the law as being too comprehensive...
...A recent poll by one of the nation's largest newspapers, Yomiuri Shimbuu, found that Kaifu's popularity rating had fallen lOpointsinjustone month, to 49.8 per cent...
...Banker Shotaro Abe, born in 1942, was a baby during the War...
...The Right has financial links to a few like-thinking members of the ruling LDP...
...His strongest political ally is President Bush," said one...
...he asked...
...President needs something done in Japan, goes one sardonic joke, he just dials Kaifu, who is always on hand to answer his "BushPhone...
...He was only chosen to serve as Prime Minister when at a critical moment in the summer of 1989, his "clean" credentials were important to the scandal-plagued party's two major power brokers, former Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita and veteran Shin Kanemaru...
...Conversations with a wide range of Japanese reveal that while most people simply prefer the status quo, many others have deeply emotional feelings about the possible breaking of a 45-year taboo...
...The price of their support, of course, was a monopolization of real power...
...The most bitter attacks on the bill charge that it violates Article 9 of the Constitution...
...Political analysts predict that this is just the beginning...
...Instead, the unit's members would act as truck drivers, doctors, military communications specialists, or construction teams...
...I'm against it...
...I know about our militarist past, but that is history...
...This prohibits sending troops overseas—even for collective self-defense...
...We should not get involved in combat, nor should we get mixed up in power politics...
...Have you ever lost a friend in war...
...By responding, we have opened up our own Pandora's Box...
...This looks like another case of Japan trying to please America...
...Kaifu has never been much more than an amiable front man...
...How can we call ourselves a nation if we do not have our own independent military power...
...For others, like the olive drab-clad members of the Greater Japan Patriotic Association, the proposed law presents an opportunity they have been yearning for...
...The controversy began two months ago, after Japan committed $4 billion to help cover multilateral costs linked to the Gulf crisis...
...When the U.S...
...We ought to do more than simply donate money...
...Japan should participate in the UN-led peacekeeping units only," he said...
...This is a democracy, said Ichiro Ozawa, the powerful secretary-general of the LDP, and one of the drafters of theproposal...
...As a result, his popularity soared, but his backing of the Peace Cooperation Law has cost him heavily...
...But the shrill voices that come through the loudspeakers seem to have little resonance among the vast majority of Japanese...
...Taxi driver Haruo Nogami concurs...
...Michael Berger, a previous contributor to the NL, is the Tokyo bureau chief of the San Francisco Chronicle...
...Japanese with no memories of the War tend to see the issue in strictly practical terms...
...In fact, it was a Bush telephone call reportedly urging Kaifu to commit personnel to the Gulf undertaking that led to the "peacekeeping unit" idea...
...It would include Japanese Self-Defense Force (SDF) troops who would be lightly armed with pistols or perhaps rifles, but would not be permitted to get involved in front-line combat...
...It is time for the Japanese to show a commitment to suffer along with the rest of us when these crises come up," a U.S...
...Party insiders say he has almost no staff member in whom he can confide...
...The United States soon asked for more—but the request was not for money, it was for people...
...I don't care how this law is written...
...I don't want to have anything to do with war or violence—ever—and I don't want my country involved, either...
...Bush praised Kaifu's leadership during the trade talks but, like everyone else, he's just using Kaifu for his own purposes...
...It was a terrible period...
...Key government appointments are made by Takeshita's circle...
...In the LDP, the Prime Minister's critics have been taunting him...
...The government reacted by introducing a bill in Parliament—the UN Peace Cooperation Law—calling for the establishment of a special peacekeeping unit of perhaps 1,000 to 2,000 people...
...Yet like many of the people I interviewed, he was not certain that the Gulf was the right place to begin a new era...
...Although the proposal may seem innocuous, it came as a sudden jolt to most Japanese...
...Securing passage of the legislation, however, is another matter...
...In Parliament, in private conversations across the nation and on television talk shows, the prospect has triggered a surge of often raw emotions...
...official said...
...asked 72-year-old Hiroaki Kamada...
...Why can't our leaders make policy based on what is proper, instead of just reacting...
...I hope the American leadership will understand that, rather than criticize us, if this bill is defeated...
...The very nation that helped assure we would never be an international military power is now encouraging us to move in that direction...
...Perhaps the one point on which there is widespread agreement is that Japan's Pandora's Box has indeed been opened...
...Even if the bill is withdrawn or voted down in Parliament, the debate will go on...
...policy may lead to a revision of Japan's Peace Constitution —a document heavily influenced by American post-World War II occupation authorities...
...I lost most of mine during the last war Japan fought...
...My whole family was hungry most of the time in those days...
...It won't be easy...
...These Right-wing extremists cruise the streets of Tokyo and other cities in military-brown vans, loudspeakers blaring their message: "Now is the time for Japan to take its rightful place among the great powers...
...It is a paradox," said House of Councillors member Masao Kunihiro...
...He would only support the Peace Cooperation Law, Kamada insisted, if it contained provisions guaranteeing civilian control...
...Government officials counter that the law they have put forward is not unconstitutional, because peacekeeping operations are designed "to guarantee collective security...
...That's what war did to us...
...A newspaper cartoon has depicted Kaifu as an apron-clad sushi chef, with droplets of perspiration flying off his brow as he struggled to serve an obviously impatient customer—George Bush...
...But I don't see a strong guarantee in this law," he said...
...What the consequences of this will be remains a subject of frequently bitter dispute...
...Why do we always have to follow America...
...Officials agree that there will be another attempt, as one of them put it, "to bring Japan back into the world of international politics...
...TO ARM OR NOT TO ARM Crossing Swords in Japan BY MICHAEL BERGER Tokyo Pressure from the Bush Administration for increased Japanese participation in the attempt to liberate Kuwait has set off the biggest political debate in this country's postwar history...
...We don't threaten people any more...
...In a Japan Economic Journal poll, only 23.1 per cent of those interviewed supported the pending legislation...
...At issue is a proposed law that would send Japanese troops overseas for the first time since World War II, to become part of the multinational force currently gathered in the Persian Gulf...
...Meanwhile, the debate has dealt a sharp blow to Toshiki Kaifu, who belongs to one of the smallest factions in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP...
...The major fear of many here is that such a demonstration of support for U.S...
...that limits Japan's military activity to the defense of its home islands...
...Japan has international obligations," says business executive Nobuaki Seino...
...For the 45 years since their disastrous military defeat in World War II, they have lived in a cocoon-like environment, cushioned from the harsh realities of international power politics by their Constitution as well as by a security treaty with theU.S...
...The argument does not appear to be very persuasive...
...And its outcome could prove harmful to Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu...
Vol. 73 • October 1990 • No. 14
