Newsletter No. 788
Editorial-Opinion
October 30, 2007

 

KUNIO HATOYAMA’S WAR ON TERRORISM
By Michael Penn

Generally speaking, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and his cabinet are a major improvement over their immediate predecessors. Fukuda’s team is more conservative than he is, but also marked for its basic competence and ability. Although things haven’t gone well for Fukuda and his team over the past month, most of the problems are things that he inherited rather than created. Fukuda has already weeded out most of the real problem cases in the cabinet. However, Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama is quickly distinguishing himself as an unwelcome exception to this beneficent trend.

Photo: Kunio Hatoyama
Source: Yoshiaki Miura

If the name “Hatoyama” sounds familiar, it should. He is the brother of Yukio Hatoyama, the opposition DPJ secretary-general who has been notably effective of late in attacking the government’s security policies. The two boys are the sons of former Foreign Minister Iichiro Hatoyama and grandsons of Shigeru Yoshida’s great conservative rival, former Prime Minister Ichiro Hatoyama. The Hatoyama political dynasty goes back even farther than that to Kazuo Hatoyama, a Meiji-era worthy.

Kunio Hatoyama was, like his brother, one of the key founders of the opposition DPJ back in 1996. However, in the year 2000 he returned to the ruling LDP, openly commenting to the press: “I was deceived by Yukio… I realized I shouldn't have joined the DPJ… I was not as ready to work with Leftists as was my brother Yukio.”

Kunio Hatoyama was appointed as Justice Minister at the end of August by Prime Minister Abe, and was kept on by Fukuda when he came to office. In early September, Hatoyama explained to the Japan Times his priorities as minister: “The death penalty embodies preventive functions against crimes. I disagree with abolishing the system… Cutting the number of illegal immigrants in half is also a goal for this administration. We must tighten up immigration management to achieve that.” His predecessor from Abe’s first cabinet, Jinen Nagase, felt that from an economic standpoint it was important to open the Japanese labor market and even to accept manual laborers and unskilled workers from abroad. Hatoyama responded: “Considering Japan's culture, I must question whether that is a good idea. This may not be the right thing to say, but that could provoke an increase in crimes by foreign nationals… I am the justice minister now."

Well, the Minister of Justice, aside from his other initiative to keep capital punishment alive through “peaceful methods” of execution, is also pushing for all foreigners, except for a handful of diplomats and some permanent residents, to be photographed and fingerprinted every single time they enter Japan. Why is this necessary? Hatoyama has explained: “I know this may cause a lot of inconvenience, but it's very necessary to fight terror… We are facing a terrorist threat as a reality today, and Japan may also become a victim of a terrorist attack.”

So aside from all the foreign criminals that might overrun Japan in the near future, Kunio Hatoyama is also determined to go after all the terrorists flocking to Japan as well. And how do we know that there are actually any foreign terrorists in Japan? Hatoyama explained that a “friend of a friend” of his was an Al-Qaida member involved in one of the Bali bombings. He continued: “I have never met this person but up until two or three years ago he seems to have been visiting Japan so often. Every time this person enters Japan he uses different passports and moustaches and therefore customs officials are unable to recognize him. It is undesirable for security reasons that such people can enter Japan so easily.”

Oops! So the Japanese Minister of Justice himself has terrorist links? That wasn’t exactly what Hatoyama was trying to argue, but that’s the message that was received by some. Today, Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura publicly rebuked Hatoyama: “It's very regrettable that he gave an impression Japan's justice minister knows such terrorists. I think his remarks were careless, so I warned him before the Cabinet meeting.”

So yet another Japanese conservative makes stupid and out-of-touch remarks to the press. As for Kunio Hatoyama himself, I can’t improve upon the verdict of Observing Japan blogger Tobias Harris: “If his friend suggested that he knew a member of Al Qaeda, wouldn't a sitting member of the Diet feel strongly about finding out whether there was any truth to the idea and putting the resources of the Japanese state to work finding and apprehending this person? And if he inquired further and found there was no truth to it, but still said it aloud, doesn't that show him to have a lack of judgment rendering him unfit to serve as, of all things, minister of justice?”

But there are also issues at play here that are larger and deeper than the question of Kunio Hatoyama’s personal fitness for office. Indeed, we have discussed these issues before at the Shingetsu Institute. The past newsletters in which I dealt with this cluster of issues most directly were as follows:

209 -- The U.S. Pushes Japan Down the Road of Nationalism and Authoritarianism
226 -- The Fear Game Revisited: Homeland Security Chief Chertoff in Tokyo
378 -- Five Years of Japan and the “War on Terrorism”

As I explained in those newsletters last year, what I think is really in play here is a noxious political cocktail that mixes Al-Qaida-style terrorism aimed at ordinary people, American antiterrorist crusading, and the deep stream of xenophobia that lies just below the surface of modern Japanese society.

I’m really getting annoyed about these matters because it is now starting to have a direct impact on my personal life. For the first time in several years I will be returning the United States briefly next month to attend to some family business. I was stunned to be told by my travel agent that the US government now demands that I tell them in advance where I will be staying while in America. Say what? An American can’t return to their own country anymore without reporting their whereabouts to the government in advance? What the hell is this? Then, on my return from Sweet Land of Liberty back to Cool Japan, I get to be fingerprinted and given a mug shot? Am I some kind of criminal on parole? Or does the distinction between criminal and citizen really mean anything these days? I’m starting to have my doubts.

While I’m sure that some people would no doubt argue that “a little inconvenience” is a small price to pay for security from terrorism, I really think that kind of logic is totally twisted. First and foremost, the Constitution of the United States was intended by its founders to have so many “checks and balances” that the individual could be left in peace to carry out his or her business unmolested by government power. The rights of the individual in this regard were said to be “inalienable” and not even subject to majority vote. Indeed the protection of minority rights is a fundamental democratic principle. In my view, these latest security measures are far more than just “a little inconvenience,” but rather an illegitimate government intrusion into my private sphere.

Beyond my own personal concerns, I also worry about the global political implications of these kinds of things. In some of their writings, Thomas Jefferson and some of his colleagues seem to suggest that a Tyranny can be defined as one in which the people fear the government and a Free Society is one in which the government fears the people.

By that particular measuring stick, can either the United States or Japan be described as being free societies? Isn’t this business about reporting my location and getting fingerprinted really about governments trying to intimidate the people into sullen obedience? People like me who are willing to attack government policies so openly seem to be a pretty small minority these days, no? But isn’t such political criticism supposed to be the lifeblood of democracy?

As for the issue of terrorism, what I’d like to suggest to Kunio Hatoyama and likeminded Japanese and American government officials is that “terrorism” will never, never completely disappear from the world, but the best way to reduce it to an absolute minimum would be to resolve the outstanding political conflicts that are intensifying it globally.

Almost all of the conflicts that are giving birth to large waves of terrorism today can and should be solved by political means. There is no necessity at all for a conflict between the United States and much of the Islamic World. This is a war of choice. It may serve to enhance the power of certain constituencies within the United States, but it is definitely not part of the greater American national interest. Indeed, if Washington policy began to reflect once again the better nature of the American character, then the vast majority of Muslims would actually come to respect and admire the United States as they used to before, say, round about the Harry Truman Era.

Rather than the Patriot Act, we need more Americans to start acting like real democratic patriots.

And as for Kunio Hatoyama’s personal war on terrorism, let him have it -- as a private citizen.