Newsletter No. 1145
Editorial-Opinion
September 25, 2008

 

TARO ASO’S SHIP OF FOOLS

The advent of Taro Aso as prime minister of Japan is an event that almost demanded some smart-alecky comment about clowns in high places. Yesterday, I was prepared to deliver just that. However, when I saw his choices as cabinet ministers, my mirth turned to horror. The shock and dread of that list of names battered my consciousness to such a degree that I could no longer string syllables into words and had to confine my fevered existence to a welcoming futon. I mean, is this a joke? Somebody shout “April Fools!” please! Yeah, wrong season. How about “Trick or Treat!” then?

This cabinet throws us right back to the darkest days of the Abe Administration. It is mostly a collection of hard right China Hawks noted more for their commitment to ideology than competence in their posts. Shoichi Nakagawa as finance minister in the midst of a global economic crisis? This is the best man for the job? Kunio Hatoyama back in the cabinet after less than two months since we saw his overdue departure? Shigeru Ishiba as minister of agriculture? (Actually, on that last one, Aso himself made a pretty funny joke. He said that the bureaucrats in the Ag Ministry seemed to be even tougher than those in the Defense Ministry, and so he chose Ishiba to impose on them a little “civilian control.”)

There are two bits of good news, however. First of all, this cabinet is unlikely to last very long. The odds are that it won’t survive even a year, so their time to do damage to the Japanese nation may turn out to be mercifully short. Second, this is not a cabinet that is likely to help Aso win the upcoming general elections. If Aso pulls out a majority, it will be due to his own charisma, not that of this cast of characters. He has missed an important opportunity to connect with the public, just as Fukuda did at the beginning of August.

CABINET PROFILES

Now it’s time to look in more detail at the sailors on this Ship of Fools. In other words, this is the new foreign policy team that we will need to endure for a while.

Takeo Kawamura, Chief Cabinet Secretary: His main experience at this level was as minister of education in one of Koizumi’s cabinets. At that time, he was noted as a proponent of pushing “patriotism” in the classroom and lamented that it was “unfortunate” that many Japanese connect the idea of patriotism with the idea of war. At one point in February 2004, he insisted that schoolteachers should instruct their students to support the GSDF deployment to Samawa. He also served a stint after 9.11 as director of the Special Committee on the Prevention of Terrorism. More recently, Kawamura was involved in Japan’s revision to the space law aimed at allowing satellites for military use. By the way, Kawamura is also an enthusiastic visitor to war criminal worshipping Yasukuni Shrine, and he did so during his time as education minister.

Hirofumi Nakasone, Foreign Minister: Nakasone is another former minister of education, but he served under Yoshiro Mori. His term was less controversial. Nakasone is best known as being the son of conservative former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, but it is not clear to me if the son should be grouped together with the father. Time will tell. Predictably, he has already called for the MSDF Indian Ocean mission to be extended.

Hiroyuki Hosoda, LDP Secretary-General: Hosoda is said to be one of the few brains in this operation, and we’ll see if he helps at all. He was Yasuo Fukuda’s successor as chief cabinet secretary from 2004 to 2005. During that time, he steadfastly defended the government’s Iraq policies. For example, in October 2004, when the Duelfer Report confirmed that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Hosoda’s response was: “If we had left the matter unattended, it could have developed into a grave threat in terms of nonproliferation of nuclear arms and weapons of mass destruction. The US government has taken a position that this report does not deny the legitimacy of the war. So have we.” Hosoda argued that it was irrelevant whether or not actual weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq because the main issue, he said, was that Saddam Husain had resisted UN resolutions. He displayed no public doubts about the policy of supporting the Iraq War even as its primary justification was unraveling during his time in office.

Yasukazu Hamada, Defense Minister: This is his first cabinet post, but he has been a “defense tribe” politician for quite a while, and has expressed admiration for his predecessor Shigeru Ishiba for “defying taboos.” I don’t know a great deal about him, but most of what I can find is disconcerting. He is an outspoken defender of both Japan’s whaling practices and political visits to Yasukuni Shrine. In relation to the latter issue, he was quoted in April 2005 as defending his visit to the shrine in the following terms: “If we had canceled or postponed, that would have given the Chinese the impression that their demonstrations had some sort of meaning, that they had accomplished something.” That one little quote tells us a lot about how this guy thinks, doesn’t it?

Toshihiro Nikai, METI Minister: Nikai stays on. He is the most solid man in this line-up. My impression of him has long been that he is both pragmatic and capable. He’ll thus be pretty lonely in this cabinet.

IMPLICATIONS FOR JAPANESE-ISLAMIC RELATIONS

In a word -- trouble. These guys will turn back the clock to the Age of Abe if they get the chance. They will be gung-ho in support of Washington policy in the Islamic world and will do their best to send the SDF into trouble spots. They are highly likely to antagonize China with needlessly belligerent comments and actions. They won’t much care for the sensitivities of Arabs or other Muslims because these are men on a mission to save Japan from liberals and pacifists and free thinkers.

Our only hope is that this gang’s life will be as like that of primitive man: nasty, brutish, and short. That’s what is needed most of all. Did I mention “short”? Heaven have mercy please!