FOREIGN RELATIONS AND WAR RESPONSIBILITY

This section contains three articles addressing Japan’s foreign policy under Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichirô and the influence of historical issues: a dialogue between Watanabe Tsuneo and Wakamiya Yoshibumi, editorial chiefs of the Yomiuri Shimbun and Asahi Shimbun, respectively, an essay by Hosoya Yûichi, a lecturer at Keiô University’s Faculty of Law, and a dialogue between Shinagawa Masaji, a permanent director of the Japan Association of Corporate Executives and chairperson of the International Development Center of Japan, and former diplomat Ogoura Kazuo, president of the Japan Foundation.

Over the past year, the issue of how Japan should confront its history of colonial rule and war has become a major point of contention in Japan’s Asian diplomacy, particularly its relations with China and South Korea. Prime Minister Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni Shrine, where the nation’s war dead are venerated, have been a particular focus of attention. Reports stating that Japan has not apologized for its invasion and colonial rule of Asian countries occasionally appear in the foreign media, but this is of course not true. With regard to China, for example, the Japanese government has expressed deep remorse for its past deeds in the 1972 Japan-China Joint Communiqué, the 1978 Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Japan and the People’s Republic of China, and the 1998 Japan-China Joint Declaration, and the Chinese government has accepted these statements. Also, in 1995 Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi stated, “Japan, following a mistaken national policy, advanced along the road to war, only to ensnare the Japanese people in a fateful crisis, and, through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations. . . . [I] express here once again my feelings of deep remorse and state my heartfelt apology.” This statement was approved by the Japanese cabinet, and Prime Minister Koizumi reaffirmed it as the government’s stance in a speech at the Asia-Africa Summit in Indonesia in April 2005 and again on August 15, 2005, in a speech to mark the anniversary of the end of the war. I might also add that neither the late Emperor Shôwa nor Emperor Akihito has visited Yasukuni Shrine since 1978, when the class A war criminals were enshrined together with the other war dead.

In spite of all of this, however, Japan continues to be criticized for not confronting its past, and such criticism is regarded as valid not only in China and South Korea but also, to some extent, around the world. One major reason for this is the visits that Prime Minister Koizumi has made to Yasukuni Shrine since 2001. His visits to an institution where class A war criminals are enshrined give the impression that the Japanese government no longer adheres to the policy expressed by Prime Minister Murayama. As a result, Japan’s relations with China and South Korea have deteriorated dramatically in recent years.

Prime Minister Koizumi has declared that he will step down upon completion of his current term as president of the Liberal Democratic Party in September, a promise I expect he will keep. However, the LDP is split on the issue of prime ministerial visits to Yasukuni Shrine, as well as on Japan’s policies toward China, South Korea, and Asia in general. Both Chief Cabinet Secretary Abe Shinzô, the favorite to be the LDP’s next president (and thus to succeed Koizumi as prime minister), and Minister for Foreign Affairs Asô Tarô, who also looks set to run, are in favor of prime ministerial visits to the controversial shrine. On the other side of the split, former Chief Cabinet Secretary Fukuda Yasuo and Minister of Finance Tanigaki Sadakazu, who are also viewed as likely candidates, take a more cautious line on this issue. Evidence of the split can be seen in the establishment of the suprapartisan Discussion Group on Building a National Peace and Memorial Facility—a move designed to express opposition to prime ministerial visits to Yasukuni—by LDP Diet member Yamasaki Taku, a close ally of Koizumi, together with Fukuda, LDP Diet member Katô Kôichi, and lawmakers from the Democratic Party of Japan and the New Kômeitô.

The articles in this section should be read in the context described above. The essay by Hosoya on the diplomatic stagnation that has occurred under Koizumi’s leadership and the Ogoura-Shinagawa dialogue on the state of Japan’s relations with China and South Korea paint a clear picture of the current situation, but I would like to highlight the following point. Exactly a year ago, in the April 2005 issue of Japan Echo, I listed the following key foreign policy issues facing Japan: (1) responding to the strategic realignment of America’s global military presence as part of the Bush administration’s “transformation of US forces,” (2) securing a permanent seat for Japan on the UN Security Council, (3) the North Korean problem, (4) relations with China, (5) the dispute with Russia over the Northern Territories north of Hokkaidô, and (6) the creation of an East Asian economic community. Koizumi’s foreign policy has been bogged down on all of these issues except the first over the past year. This is the diplomatic stagnation referred to by Hosoya.

But it is the dialogue between Watanabe Tsuneo of the Yomiuri Shimbun and Wakamiya Yoshibumi of the Asahi Shimbun to which I would urge readers to pay particular attention. In at least one or two editorials a month, the Asahi argues against Prime Minister Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni Shrine in the context of Japan’s Asian diplomacy and relations with China and South Korea. But for the editor in chief of the Yomiuri, which is generally regarded as a conservative newspaper, to effectively form a grand coalition against Koizumi’s visits with his Asahi counterpart is a major news story in itself. The total circulation of Japanese newspapers is estimated at 50 million, of which national newspapers account for 28 million. Of these, the Yomiuri has a circulation of about 10.0 million, the Asahi 8.3 million, the Mainichi Shimbun 4.0 million, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun 3.7 million, and the Sankei Shimbun 2.0 million. In terms of their political leanings, the Yomiuri is generally characterized as conservative, the Asahi as liberal, the Mainichi as centrist, the Nikkei as business-oriented, and the Sankei as rightist. In other words, with the Yomiuri and Asahi forming an alliance to oppose Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni and the Mainichi and Nikkei adopting the same position, the visits are now opposed by the overwhelming majority of the media. The only major daily left that supports the visits is the rightist Sankei, which accounts for less than 5% of total circulation.

This is important in itself, because it highlights the clear division between conservatives and rightists and the isolation of right-wingers who espouse a blinkered form of nationalism. It does not mean that the Yomiuri has changed its stance, though. In its February 18, 2006, edition, the Economist describes the Yomiuri as “the flag-waver for a more assertive Japan, one that argued for a revision of the pacifist constitution . . . and that bristled at any foreign criticism of the Yasukuni shrine.” Yet the constitutional revision advocated by the Yomiuri concerns the stipulation in the second paragraph of Article 9 that “land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained,” not the declaration in the first paragraph that the Japanese people “renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.” And the Yomiuri had no position on the Yasukuni issue until it clarified its stance in a June 4, 2005, editorial calling for creation of a new war memorial.

What views has the Yomiuri expressed since publishing that editorial? Opposition to the prime minister’s visits to Yasukuni and support for the construction of a new national war memorial are two examples, but another is the assertion that we should reexamine the question of Japan’s war responsibility, and in particular the responsibility of politicians and military officers who were involved in the war from the Manchurian Incident in 1931 to the end of the Pacific War in 1945.

What is the significance of this? We do not know what effect the formation of the Yomiuri-Asahi alliance against prime ministerial visits to Yasukuni will have on the LDP presidential election in September. Perhaps it will have no impact at all. But to argue, as the Economist does, that, “Mr. Watanabe reserves his bile for Mr. Koizumi—partly, perhaps, out of personal pique that the prime minister does not hang on his every word, as predecessors did,” is to trivialize the matter. Whatever Watanabe’s intentions regarding influencing the LDP election, there is no doubt that he is attempting to confront head-on the issue of Japan’s war responsibility as a member of the generation that experienced the war.

Until now, the issue of war responsibility has always been linked with that of the fairness of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (Tokyo Trial). Knowing that the Tokyo Trial was conducted by the victors of the war, that it was as much a political show as a judicial procedure, and that not a few clearly innocent people were convicted as class B and class C war criminals, many Japanese find it hard to accept the trial and its verdicts as entirely just. Rightists have exploited the ambivalence that many Japanese feel toward the Tokyo Trial to push the argument that Japan fought the war to liberate Asia or to defend its own existence. Leaving aside the question of whether the Tokyo Trial was just or not, however, it cannot be denied that Japan caused a great deal of damage and suffering to the people of Asian countries through its colonial rule and invasions. But who was responsible for Japan’s wartime misdeeds? Watanabe argues that this is an issue the Japanese people must confront as Japanese—a process that, in the media at least, has already begun with the formation of the Yomiuri-Asahi alliance. (Shiraishi Takashi, Professor, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies)

© 2006 Japan Echo Inc.