Japanese politics

Aberration

The LDP shocks Japan and the region with its choice of a new leader

Sep 29th 2012 | TOKYO | from the print edition

ONCE again, the Japanese public must be wondering whether politics only serves to inflict cruel jokes upon them. On September 26th the opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) chose Shinzo Abe, a nationalist former prime minister, to lead it into the next general election, even though he quit as leader after just a year in 2007 because of political failure and a stress-induced bowel illness.

The election of Mr Abe, 58, came as a shock, not least to the LDP’s own rank and file who were hoping it had a good shot of returning to power within a few months. Their favourite, Shigeru Ishiba, won the most votes, though not a majority, in the first round. Second-round voting was reserved only for LDP members of the Diet (parliament), who ignored the grass roots. Mr Abe will reportedly choose Mr Ishiba, a fellow hawk, as his deputy.

Mr Abe’s 12 months as prime minister in 2006-07 were marked by government ineptitude, scandal and a needless distraction over his views about the women of neighbouring countries forced to serve as sex slaves to the Japanese army during the second world war—he claimed the practice never existed. All the while, he suffered from a stomach disorder, which reached its climax after a state visit to India in August 2007, forcing him to the lavatory so often that he felt he could not govern. A short while later he resigned. Two years after that the LDP itself was out of power.

Mr Abe’s first (and perhaps only) shining act as prime minister had been to rebuild the bridges with South Korea and China that had been casually burned by his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi. As soon as he came to office, he visited Seoul and Beijing to reassure the two countries that he wished to improve ties. If he intends to do the same again, at a time of Japan’s immensely strained relations with its two neighbours over disputed islands, he gives no clue. On the contrary, he hints at remorse over his earlier conciliation.

As Chinese (and then Taiwanese) ships entered Japanese-controlled waters around the contested Senkaku Islands, which the Chinese call the Diaoyu Islands, Mr Abe pledged to be their staunch defender. “The Senkakus are Japanese,” he said last week, after praising the government’s recent decision to buy three of the islands from their private owner. “We will unambiguously protect our territory.” Mr Abe has made similar pledges in relation to another group of disputed islets that Japan calls Takeshima and South Korea calls Dokdo. He also promises to reverse a key official admission of guilt on the sex slavery, which could have explosive diplomatic consequences around Asia.

The row with China has already cost Japanese companies millions of dollars in lost business. Toyota and Nissan announced this week that they are temporarily shutting at least five plants in China, as local buyers shun Japanese cars in protest at the nationalisation of the Senkakus. All Nippon Airways says 40,000 seats have been cancelled on its China-Japan flights since the row began.

With the stakes so high, the LDP’s decision to appoint a foreign-policy hawk may be because it thinks there has been a rightward shift among ordinary Japanese in recent months. Koichi Nakano of Sophia University in Tokyo says that “the LDP parliamentary group has moved so far to the right they probably think the country has too”. Mostly, however, the return of Mr Abe’s ghost suggests a party bereft of ideas, new talent and principles. It hardly suggests an organisation ready to forge the new path Japan so desperately needs.

In the next election, polls suggest, the LDP cannot win by itself, nor even only with the support of its old ally, New Komeito, a Buddhist-linked party. Mr Abe has already made clear his admiration for the mayor of Osaka, Toru Hashimoto, who leads a national political insurrection with his rightist Japan Restoration Party. The two men share many of the same conservative views, especially on history. Mr Abe will be hoping for an alliance with Mr Hashimoto’s party in the next general election, which the prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), is expected to call in the next few months.

Such an alliance, in theory, would go deeper than just hawkish views on disputed territory. Both men want to decentralise Japan’s Tokyo-dominated politics and cut growth-stifling bureaucracy. But they would also have to reconcile their differences, including over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a regional free-trade grouping which Mr Hashimoto supports but Mr Abe opposes.

Even Mr Hashimoto’s many supporters may find him tarred by association with Mr Abe (see Banyan). Mr Noda will hope that voters prove as fickle as they have been in recent elections. He may be tempted to postpone the election for as long as possible, in the hopes that Mr Abe can snatch defeat for the LDP from the jaws of victory.

from the print edition | Asia

筆者當年的回應：

Aberration

Oct 3rd 2012, 07:38

Just after the outcome of the election last Wednesday, I watched Masayo Nakajima’s analysis of NHK World reported by Sherry Ahn. Masayo’s “That’s possible, I think.” got me limited in Joe Hisashi’s “zin-shen no mi-lei gowa” (life’s carousel in Japanese). Five years on, former Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, returned to LDP’s top; moreover, Japan is likely to return to Asian glorious dynasty of Koizumi Junichiro.

From 2009’s failure, LDP wanted to recover with struggling for something to say. During DPJ’s government, Japan experienced the adjustment of Japan-US, -Russia, -South Korea and -China relationship, horrible earthquake and the declining economy. At the critical point, prime minister Yoshihiko Noda still raised the consumption tax despite massive opponents. His resolution, on the surface, solved the crisis of national debt but was meanwhile leading to another crisis, politically. First, Ichiro Ozawa and the following left DPJ for People’s New Party (PNP) and Toru Hashimoto reconciled Osaka with other Japan’s local faction turning to Japan Restoration Party (JRP).

On Sep. 28, the result of Nikkei and TBS’s poll, showing the adversity of Noda’s cabinet after the recovery of LDPs Abe, indicated that the 35% be likely to vote in favour of LDP while the only 14% support DPJ and JRP may get 12%. Although the opponents of Abe is more than supporters of him, as Mr. Abe talked to me, LDP is due to actively have Noda hold the re-election for the latest poll while this support ratio becomes more than 40%.

On the contrary, Noda reshuffled his Cabinet. The new Cabinet will retain 8 members, including Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba, Trade and industry Minister Yukio Edano and Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura. Deputy Prime Minister Katsuya Okada, also among the group, continuing as Social Security and Tax Reform Minister and Administrative Reform Minister.

In addition, seemingly to buffer the acid-base about Japan’s surroundings and deficit-financial bill with social welfare, Noda appointed professional Koizumi’s former Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka - now a Democrat - as education minister and 65-year-old Koriki Jojima, taking over Jun Azumi who turned to DPJ’s acting secretary-general, as the fifth financial minister in 3 years. Ms. Tanaka, the first female Cabinet member in Japanese history, is the important faction’s leader and member in Koizumi’s dynasty. It is her father, the late prime minister Kakuei Tanaka, that signed the normalizing diplomatic tie with China’s late prime minister Zhou En-lai.

Obviously, Noda wanted to express his willingness to keep the image of Sino-Japanese ties normalized from 1972. In the aspect of remaining member, they mostly hold unfriendly-inclination attitude toward China. Noda and Gemba are undeniably good partner with regard to Sino-Japanese relation, but, for me (in front of me) they play a series of “Home alone”. Noda’s these 8 core member, recently, face difficulties of endangered surroundings of territory disputes and they intend to show the national ideology more than law’s logic. On the other hand, Noda had Ms. Tanaka return to Cabinet for her experience. Tanaka was also was a member of the Sino-Japanese Friendship Association who last week visited Beijing and talked with China’s Communist Party (CCP) Politburo member Jia Qinglin (4th posistion in 4th-generation CCP).

This is the third time Noda reshuffles his Cabinet. In DPJ’s governing record, The financial minister is always seen as the index. Former Naoto Kan and the incumbent Noda once sat at this seat. During 3-year period, Toyota and Japan Airline adding to 311 earthquake had Japan be suffered horribly with the following Japanese enterprises like Sony, Sharp, NEC and Nintendo losing too much money. In addition, DPJ wants to exercise better social welfare as national debt elevates while no willingness to cede the power to any other.

Abe, for several years, never gave up the next climax of his political career. At this chance, he appeals for the peaceful relation with US and has the alarm against China but doesn’t want to lose his head. During 2006-2007, he visited China impressively as called “enigma” in international politics. In 2008, he was invited by Taiwan’s chief of legislative Yuan, Wang Jin-ping and he went to Taipei again about a year ago showing his passion to Taiwan. Abe’s family own two prime minister, his grandfather Kishi Nobusuke (1957-1960) and his great-uncle Sato Eisaku (1964-1972) with his father, Abe Shintaro, who was Japans foreign minister.

Noda is forced to pin a contour line of circle right now. LDP’s enchanting the recovery makes me remember myself who loves listening to Ai Otsuka’s “Renai Shiashin” and “Kinyo Hanebi” with Asian stable prosperity. More and more Japanese is inclined to go back to Koizumi’s dynasty. I hope this Chibakens congressman remember Yokohama’s dumpling vendor that Zhou En-lai praised very much before any trouble occurred - and no more.

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這篇是在日本民主黨的三年執政後，之前曾擔任過首相的自由民主黨前黨魁安倍晉三，在沉潛一陣子後決定要參選眾議員。筆者從NHK World的首席評論員中島將譽，和玻利維亞出生的韓裔主播Shery Jis Ahn  (https://twitter.com/sheryahnnews，目前在Bloomberg擔任"Bloomberg Market"當家主播：https://www.bloombergmedia.com/talent/people/shery-ahn/)的評論得知「人生的旋轉木馬」之幕一段，自民黨會在年底改選重返執政。筆者在2015年前很常收看NHK World English，至今仍然是筆者收國際消息的兩個外媒首選網站，另外一個是在日經中文網。

彼時日相野田佳彥對外強硬，改組內閣並沒有帶來民調回升。筆者記得，除了有貼出來的幾個如教育大臣及執行幹事，而前台南市長張燦鍙的日本同學列於法務大臣，招致更糟的結果。野田派了代表見當時中國政協主席賈慶林，但對筆者來說，這首相是玩小鬼當家的遊戲，釣魚島的主權爭議沒有平和。而如今裡面的地產富豪路人已經是美國總統川普，朝鮮核問題有暫時喘口氣的餘地; 中日美三方的關係已經是中日偏緩和，中美有貿易角力戰，日本對中美各有疑慮。

筆者末尾回憶起「謎樣的安倍晉三」，這篇是2006年10月Time Express中文版的選文。當時因胃疾而提前交棒的他，這次有首席謀師金美齡的協助，順利於2012年12月26日重返執政，至今是戰後任期最久的日本首相，現在是第98任首相第四次安倍內閣。當年安倍一上任就立刻訪問北京，是很務實作中日外交邦誼，這大轉彎也引起當時媒體一陣猜測。筆者對當時的日本印象，是居於大塚愛的「戀愛寫真」的意境內，由於前任小泉純一郎的天才領導日本五年多，內外十分昇平。

安倍是十足的國家主義者，因此除了經濟政策的修正，如修憲的問題也是當時選民所關注者。上篇有以下三篇的參考。

Nationalism in Japan

Beware the populists

Aided by a pandering press, a handful of nationalists can have a dangerous impact beyond Japan’s shores

Oct 6th 2012 | TOKYO| from the print edition

SINCE the defeat that ended the second world war, Japan has been a powerful force for peace and prosperity in Asia. Among other things, it has been easily the most generous aid giver, helping lift poor neighbours out of poverty. You would not know it from the volleys of neighbourly abuse Japan gets, and not just for its aggression up to 1945, when tens of millions of Asians died. Detractors also claim that Japanese imperialism has never been extinguished but merely concealed in dastardly fashion, biding its time. The claim is nonsense. Though loud, the right-wing thugs cruising Tokyo in black “sound trucks” blaring out militarist songs are few. Still, now and then a nationalist politician can casually upend years of efforts to soothe troubled relationswith neighbours.

Most recently, that person has been Shintaro Ishihara, the governor of Tokyo and an old rogue of the Japanese right. His attempt on behalf of the metropolitan government to buy the tiny islands known as the Senkakus in Japan and the Diaoyus in China sparked a row between the world’s second- and third-largest economies that could damage their bilateral trade, worth $350 billion—and even tip Japan back into recession. Last month Yoshihiko Noda, the prime minister, nationalised three of the islands, apparently to stop the incendiary Mr Ishihara getting them first. Yet that nuance was lost on China, which also claims the islands. Anti-Japanese protests there flared, and the government threw bilateral relations into the freezer.

Extreme right-wing views might now move into Japan’s mainstream national politics with the election of Shinzo Abe, the grandson of a wartime cabinet member, as head of the opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). He was briefly prime minister in 2006-07 and may well defeat Mr Noda in the next election. In 2006 Mr Abe pushed to improve rocky relations with China and South Korea after his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, had poisoned them with visits to Tokyo’s Yasukuni shrine, where Japan’s war dead, among them “Class A” war criminals, are revered. Mr Abe’s recent comments playing down Japan’s war crimes are far less conciliatory, and he talks of resuming visits to Yasukuni.

Yasushi Kudo, head of Genron, an NGO seeking to improve Sino-Japanese relations, sees a growing danger in Japan of populists milking the China issue for political ends. Rising anti-China sentiment provides fertile ground. On top of concerns about anti-Japanese demonstrations, Mr Kudo says people are increasingly worried about China’s economic and military might. According to a Genron poll released in June a record 84.3% of Japanese viewed China unfavourably. And that was before the latest Senkaku spat.

Even some staunch conservatives worry about Ishihara-style populism. The Nippon Foundation is a think-tank supporting Japan’s maritime claims. Its late founder, a Mussolini fan, was accused but never charged as a war criminal. Yet Takeju Ogata, the current president, says the Tokyo governor is “the cause of all these problems”, because he should never have stirred up a slumbering territorial issue.

Like Mr Abe, Mr Ogata supports a move to amend the pacifist constitution drafted by America in 1947, to give Japan the right to “collective self-defence”. Changing the constitution would require two-thirds support in the upper and lower houses of parliament, as well as a referendum, so he does not expect it to happen soon. Mr Ishihara’s provocation will have made that quest harder still.

The rise of popular nationalism in Japan is ably abetted by the media. Similar pandering is no surprise in China, yet Japan supposedly has a free and inquiring press. With the Senkakus, says Jeff Kingston of Temple University in Tokyo, the media have been cheerleaders: “They see the voice of reason as the voice of treason.”

Likewise, the LDP, hoping to regain power in the next election, has failed to rein in Mr Ishihara. Indeed, some members are keen to jump on his nationalist bandwagon. The party has supported him as Tokyo governor since 1999.

Yet for all the populism, a one-sided press and craven politics, so far there have been almost none of the public outbursts in Japan that were seen in China. Genron’s latest poll of influential Japanese, issued on October 3rd, says most oppose nationalising the Senkakus, do not think it will lead to military conflict, and hope the issue will be shelved. Mr Kingston says Japanese nationalism has “all the power of one-hand clapping”. Abroad, though, the clapping is amplified as loudly as those blaring black trucks in Tokyo.

from the print edition | Asia

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National identity

Pictures of the enemy

Oct 1st 2012, 4:18 by N.D. | SHANGHAI

NATIONAL day, October 1st this and every year, might seem like a fine time to put aside recent differences with that biggish neighbour across the East China Sea. It might, were it not the case that the national identity has become so unfortunately bound up with demonstrations against Japan. So we turn from recent differences to subjects less timely.

THE horrors of the Nanjing massacre of 1937 have long stoked the imagination of Chinese artists. In just the past three years, two films have tackled the subject: Zhang Yimou’s “The Flowers of War” and “City of Life and Death” by Lu Chuan (on the film’s set, above). Neither director shies away from presenting the brutality of the Japanese army, who, on invading the city, murdered hundreds of thousands of people. But one difference proved crucial to the films’ longevity at the box office. The patriotic “Flowers” became the highest-grossing Chinese film of 2011. Mr Lu’s film, which cast a Japanese soldier in a nuanced light, fared well in terms of ticket sales initially but was pulled from screens prematurely, without having time for its natural run. The film-maker’s gesture of sympathy towards the Japanese side stirred too much controversy.

There is an established interplay between popular culture and the politics of Sino-Japanese relations. Japan’s inability to issue sufficient apology for its aggressions in the second world war—as compared with Germany’s good example, say—or to pay reparations to its victims, is perpetually offensive to China. Key moments of imperialist aggression, such as the Nanjing massacre, are revisited endlessly in Chinese television, films, radio dramas and novels, with a patriotic zeal. State media puffs up the resentment, as it is doing so with the current fisticuffs over the Diaoyu (or Senkaku) islands.

On September 26th, the Xinhua news agency declared that the islands are China’s “sacred territory since ancient times”. On September 29th, the China Dailytook out a double-page advertorial with the headline: “Diaoyu Islands Belong to China”, in the New York Timesand some other major American newspapers. Today in China, and beyond, if you have eyes and ears it is difficult to forget Japans wrongdoings.

Yet it was not always so. In the decades following the second Sino-Japanese war (1937-1945), when China’s wounds were still smarting, anti-Japan feeling barely registered in the official propaganda. In the history textbooks of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, Japanese aggression was consigned to a few sentences, written in simple, dry language.

In the 1980s the tone changed. “The government found nationalism to be a politically useful tool to rally support to a regime in crisis,” says Yinan He, an expert on Sino-Japanese relations who is based in America. At that time, soon after the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese Communist Party faced widespread resentment. Shifting the focus of public attention away from class struggle, it was thought, could offset mounting social instability. Popular culture became the means.

Post-1980s films, television, novels and radio became imbued with a new sense of national identity. So did school textbooks. Television shows such as 2006’s “Drawing Sword”, a 30-episode series which followed a Chinese platoon fighting Japanese imperialists, drew tens of millions of viewers. Geling Yan’s novella, “13 Flowers of Nanjing” (from which Mr Zhang borrowed for his film) became a bestseller. Entertainment still must toe the official line or risk being shelved, but nationalism became a safe discourse. It also fostered a deep distrust of Japan.

That is why attempts to present a more balanced view, such as Mr Lu’s, have been unwelcome and scarce. When Jiang Wen took his film “Devils on the Doorstep” to the Cannes Film Festival in 2000, it won the competition’s Grand Prix. Mr Jiang had sought to counter Chinese literature and film, which perpetually cast the Chinese population as victims of aggression, with a comedy set in the second Sino-Japanese war. Feted in France, back in China it was banned.

Chinese people’s attitude towards history is a serious problem, according to Mr Lu. “We always say that we have thousands of years of history, and we are proud of this”, he says. “But we destroyed all the records, pulled down the buildings, and buried the truth.” He adds that people took issue with “City of Life and Death” because it went against their history lessons. Though his film was pulled early from cinemas, Mr Lu felt satisfied to see people talking about the issue.”

(Picture credit: Wikimedia Commons)

« Chinese politics: A spectacular fall

Japan in Chinese history

Cross-currents

Sep 27th 2012, 11:00 by J.J. | BEIJING

AT A restaurant just up the street from Japan’s embassy on Sunday, September 23rd, local diners were lining up to take advantage of a regular weekend buffet that features tempura, sashimi, sushi and other Japanese delicacies. Just inside the door stood two prominently displayed Chinese national flags. Restaurant staff said business was getting back to normal, but added that it might recover more quickly if both ends of their street were not still blocked off by military-style barricades and police standing watch in full riot gear.

The anti-Japanese protests which roiled several Chinese cities last week have subsided, but the situation remains tense. The emotion and vitriol unleashed against Japan during last week’s demonstrations was a reminder that anti-Japanese nationalism remains a potent—and potentially destabilising—force in China.

Zhou Enlai once characterised the relationship between the two countries as “2,000 years of friendship and five decades of misfortune”. The latter referring to the period that began with the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 and lasted to the end of Japan’s occupation of China at the end of the second world war. The history of Japan’s invasion of China, in particular, remains a painful and traumatic memory for many Chinese, including very many who were not yet born at the time. Old wounds from that era are kept fresh through the media, in television dramas and movie plots, as well as in the “patriotic history” curriculum taught in the mainland’s schools.

Zhou’s 2,000 years of friendship refers to a long history of cultural cross-pollination. Chinese historians never tire of listing the many contributions China made to the development of Japanese politics, literature, religion and culture. Buddhism represented a key conduit for the exchange of intellectual, philosophical and aesthetic ideas between China and Japan.

Even in the bleak years that followed Japan’s humiliating defeat of the Qing empire in 1895—a defeat which resulted in China’s cession of both Taiwan and the chain of islets currently in dispute—thousands of Chinese students went abroad to study in Japan. Their numbers included Chiang Kai-shek, the author Lu Xun, and the female revolutionary martyr Qiu Jin. Sun Yat-sen travelled there many times, organising the Chinese overseas students and recruiting among them for his Revolutionary Alliance.

In Japan students learned about medicine, science and the social sciences, and along the way they adopted a new vocabulary to describe the modern world. Literally. Japanese translators used their version of a Chinese Buddhist term sekai (Chinese: shijie), a combination of characters which indicated a distinction in time and space and was used to mean “generation”, and adapted it to mean “the world,” replacing the older Chinese term tianxia, or “all under Heaven”. Last month a programme director for CCTV 1, Xu Wenguang, reminded his microblog followers of the staggering number of Chinese words, especially in the social sciences, which were likewise reimported from Japan. Japanese translators in the 19th and 20th centuries, faced with the daunting challenge posed by concepts like “society”, “philosophy” and “economics”, often simply borrowed classical Chinese phrases, imbuing them with new meaning along the way—creating what Victor Mair, a Sinologist, refers to as “round-trip words”. Centuries after Japanese culture had incorporated Chinese characters as a major component of its own writing system, Chinese students would return from Japan with a new lexicon for scholarship of their own.

Nor were the preceding 2,000 years always ones of friendship.

In the seventh century, the forces of Tang China clashed with Japanese armies in the Battle of Baekgang. The two-day battle, fought along the Geum river on the Korean peninsula, bore many of the hallmarks that would characterise future conflicts. It began as a proxy war, with China and Japan lining up behind rival powers that were vying for control of the Korean peninsula. This was to be the first of many contests China and Japan would fight in which Korea played the role of a prize.

In the 13th century, the armies of Kublai Khan, the founder of the Yuan empire, carried out a pair of major raids against the Japanese “home islands” (pictured above, courtesy Fukuda Taika). Hopelessly outmatched by the Mongols, the Japanese defenders dug in and prayed. Successfully, as it were, for both times the Mongol fleets suffered enormous damage from sudden storms, divine winds that became known in Japanese as the kamikaze.

During the latter years of the Ming empire, the armies of Toyotomi Hideyoshi launched repeated attacks against Korea as part of a grander plan to conquer the mainland. The Koreans called on the Ming court to protect them. The result was a brutal war, featuring the use of early firearms and cannon. The casualties were enormous and the damage proved crippling to both sides—but especially to the Ming empire, which had already begun its final decline. Hideyoshi died in 1598, ending, at least for the moment, visions of a Japanese empire on the mainland.

In 1894, China and Japan once again found themselves backing opposed Korean factions and, once again, China—this time in the form of the Qing empire—saw itself acting in defence of a tributary state. Twenty-six years after the Meiji Restoration, Japan was undertaking an aggressive programme to modernise its industry and its army. It was also eager to join the ranks of Europe’s imperialist nations. The Japanese victory dealt a terrible blow to both China’s national pride and to those officials who had worked for decades to modernise China’s own military and industrial bases. It also sparked a crisis of confidence among China’s reformist elite. Never before had the Chinese nation seemed in greater danger of being carved up and divided among the world’s imperial powers.

In a web chat posted last week, two of our editors remarked on the similarities between 21st-century Asia and 19th-century Europe. There are parallels there, to be sure, but what is happening today between China and Japan can also be seen as the latest chapter in a centuries-old rivalry between the two pre-eminent powers in North-East Asia.

If that history of conflict and violent competition seems to suggest a stormy course ahead in Sino-Japanese relations, an equally deep history of co-operation and cultural exchange must be borne in mind too. It might offer hope that China and Japan can find some way to reconcile their grievances and work together to keep a prosperous peace in the region—even when the newspaper headlines do not.

(Picture credit: Wikimedia Commons)

« Chinas wealthiest: When getting rich is not glorious