Newsletter No. 685
News-Analysis
July 24, 2007

 

JAPANESE CONSERVATIVES THREATEN TO PULL SUPPORT IN IRAQ OVER COMFORT WOMEN ISSUE

The issue of “comfort women” -- captured women used for sex during the Japanese Imperial Army’s occupation of Asia in the 1940s -- has become a major issue in Japanese-American relations, but I haven’t mentioned it much here at Shingetsu because I have not seen too many direct links between this controversial issue and our own theme of Japanese-Islamic relations. A recent development has changed that calculus.

Shortly after the upper house elections in Japan, the US House of Representatives is expected to pass House Resolution 121, a mostly-symbolic measure calling on the Japanese government to make a formal, official apology to the former comfort women, and to unambiguously acknowledge the crimes of that era. The main initiators of this measure such as US Representative Michael Honda have stated clearly that their intention is not “Japan-bashing,” but simply to have justice be done and move on. They feel that the unresolved historical issues are not only negatively affecting Japan’s relationship with Asia, but also having an indirect, negative effect on US regional policy as well. That is why they think that this is their business too.

The reaction of Japanese conservatives to this movement in the US Congress has been little short of hysterical. Most of their efforts to “explain” their attitude toward the comfort women issue have tended to backfire, and increased the level of support for Honda’s measure in Washington. Some of the so-called “alliance managers” such as Michael Green have backed the Japanese conservative’s demand to have the whole issue dropped. They feel that serious damage to the US-Japan security alliance may result from Congressional support of this measure. In spite of these fears, the indications are that the House of Representatives will pass House Resolution 121 overwhelmingly when it finally comes up for a vote.

The reason that this has now become an issue for the Shingetsu Institute is because of a recent move by the Japanese conservatives. On June 22nd the Japanese ambassador in Washington, Ryozo Kato, sent a “blunt” letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and four other key Congressional leaders. In it, Ambassador Kato warned that the resolution “will almost certainly have lasting and harmful effects on the deep friendship, close trust and wide-ranging cooperation our two nations now enjoy.” Among the areas of cooperation that he suggested were in immediate danger was Tokyo’s support of US policy in Iraq.

House Speaker Pelosi quickly responded by reconfirming her support for House Resolution 121 and saying that she was looking forward to the vote. Also, the Chosun Ilbo of South Korea reported that the US State Department was particularly “displeased” that the Japanese government would link the comfort women issue with support in Iraq.

When you think about it, this really is a stunning and self-destructive move by Ambassador Kato and the conservatives behind him. First of all, it is a dramatic confession that Japanese policy in Iraq is motivated almost exclusively by a desire to please Washington and logically unrelated, therefore, to Tokyo’s own assessment of its own particular regional interests. (Of course, readers of my work know that this has been my analysis since the beginning of the Iraq adventure). Beyond that, threatening to pull support for Iraq over an entirely unrelated (and nearly insignificant) issue is an extremely ill-considered move by Tokyo. It’s not difficult to perceive that nearly all parties in Washington will view such a threat resentfully, and that its main impact will be to undermine the faith of American policymakers in the very sanity of their Japanese allies.

From my own perspective I’m also annoyed: Supporting the destruction of Iraqi society through aid to the occupying forces? Tens of thousands of Iraqis dead from a civil war that we inadvertently helped bring about? Millions displaced? Who cares! But ask us to apologize about the comfort women? Whooah! What an insult to our dignity! Maybe we should just pull out of Iraq then!

In further regard to the manner in which the Japanese conservative position has been received in Washington, I wrote to a contact of mine there who is very knowledgeable about Congress and US policy toward Japan, and I asked this person to make some comments about the issue. This was what my contact said about the response in general:

“My sense is that folks in DC see Japan as pathetic and are quite annoyed. There is a group, led by Michael Green, that buys into the nonsense that the resolution is backed by anti-Japan forces, that the Democrats are too liberal to understand the issue, and that the resolution is not necessary. These folks do nothing to explain any facts about how the Japanese government works, or just how bad the rightists are. It is also unclear to me just how much this group even knows about the issue… The ‘missteps’ of the conservatives have simply been that they have been themselves. They have felt so self-assured of their relationships with Washington's Japan experts that they felt comfortable voicing their long-held views. For whatever reason, the Comfort Women issue struck a particularly sensitive cord with Japanese conservatives and prompted them to be quite outspoken. Unfortunately, their views and attitudes are viewed as particularly obnoxious even to the most conservative American alliance builder… Team Armitage worked very hard to put aside the long-held distrust the American military has had of Japan and to show that Japan could be a reliable ally -- albeit when the time came. The letter, the rightist rhetoric, the intense lobbying, the emphasis on the abduction issue have all combined to remind the Asia policy community of just what Japan is really capable of… Japan's near obsessive denial of the Comfort Women tragedy has undermined its credibility in Washington. Alliance building will be more difficult in the short term. To be sure, many of Japan's friends see the resolution as anti-Japanese and can justify ignoring Tokyo's reaction. In the long term, if Tokyo pushes its political right back to the fringe, then the alliance will advance.”

In specific regard to the Iraq issue, my contact wrote as follows:

“Tokyo's threats to pull its funds and support for American efforts at reconstruction and democracy-building do not only hurt its credibility with Washington but also with the rest of the world community. The common values, the arc of prosperity talk all turns flat if Japan fails to pursue its obligations to peace building. Who is really being hurt if Japan rolls back its support for Iraq and Afghanistan?… Will Japan's Middle East policy differ from Washington's now? Hasn't it always?”

There are areas in which I don’t fully agree with my Washington contact’s views, and time will tell if these dark hints about the faltering of the US-Japan alliance will really come to fruition. One point on which I have little doubt, however, is that the Abe regime is poorly managing its foreign policy on many fronts, even in regard to the crucial US-Japan security alliance.

Note to Shinzo Abe -- North Korea abductees and comfort women are not the key issues that will decide Japan’s future!