by Philippe Valdois

On August 14, 2015, a day before the 70th anniversary of the Japanese defeat in WW2, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe addressed the nation. The stakes were high, as Japan needed to restore trust with its neighbors. It also needed to show it could face history, since it would hardly be possible to expect the future to be shared by equal Asian partners without a common understanding of history. This statement also came at a time when there is growing concern both inside and outside Japan that various recent government initiatives to revise the Constitution, reinforce the military or muzzle the media, among other things, are but the tip of the iceberg, and that maybe the real objectives of the government in recent years have been much more ideological in nature than the public might have been led to believe when the focus was on Abenomics.

 It is my understanding that there are concerted efforts to implement long-term societal changes under the leadership of Shinzo Abe and that behind the talk about making Japan a “normal” country lies, in fact, for some members of Japan’s elite, a deep dissatisfaction with post-war democratization, and a deep-seated nostalgia for the pre-war Imperial system. The latest statement by Shinzo Abe only confirms what many observers, scholars and journalists have recently pointed out.

 Are these efforts going to succeed or fail? Scholars and specialists have diverging opinions on the question. To decide if there really is a shift in society towards the right, if this shift is a new phenomenon or the emergence of deep-seated prejudice and xenophobia, we need to evaluate the relative influence of political and ideological forces, including public opinion. Also, there is no doubt that the media and the educators have to be reined in if ultraconservatives have a chance to see their long-term strategies and shaping of public opinion succeed. Education in particular is becoming the main stage where the fight for winning the souls of the future generations is taking place. Keeping in mind Shinzo Abe’s anniversary statement, we will start by going back in time to the San Francisco Treaty.

In a subsequent essay, we will introduce some of the counteracting forces we can find in the academic world, in grassroots movements, in the press and nowadays in a increasingly-vocal segment of the young population.

The San Francisco System Eight Major Problematic Legacies According to Dr. John W. Dower

The San Francisco Treaty, or Peace Treaty with Japan, was signed on September 8, 1951, along with the Security Treaty. Those treaties were to mark the beginning of what Prof. Dower calls the “San Francisco System.”

John W. Dower, MIT professor emeritus of Japanese history said:

 “The disputed islands, the containment-of-China accusations, even the bitter “history issue” involving recollection of imperial Japan’s militarism all have toxic roots in the early years of the Cold War. Together with other present-day controversies, they trace back to the San Francisco System under which Japan re-entered the post-war world as a sovereign nation after being occupied by U.S. forces for over six years, from August 1945 to the end of April 1952.” [1]

Communist China, the Chinese nationalists in Taiwan and South and North Korea were excluded from the Conference although their people had greatly suffered from Japanese aggression and occupation.

Washington had one major objective, and it was to use Japan in the context of the Cold War for strategic purposes as became clear later clear during the Vietnam War. In exchange for the end of occupation and the protection of the U.S. military, Japan was forced to accept the continuous presence of U.S. bases in Japan.

 As Prof. Dower points out:

 “The corrosive long-term consequences of this post-occupation estrangement between Japan on the one hand and China and Korea on the other are incalculable. Unlike West Germany in post-war Europe, Japan was inhibited from moving effectively toward reconciliation and reintegration with its nearest Asian neighbors. Peace making was delayed. The wounds and bitter legacies of imperialism, invasion, and exploitation were left to fester—unaddressed and largely unacknowledged in Japan. And ostensibly independent Japan was propelled into a posture of looking east across the Pacific to America for security and, indeed, for its very identity as a nation.” [2]

 Prof. Dower goes on identifying height problematic legacies:

 (1) Okinawa and the “two Japans”; (2) unresolved territorial issues; (3) U.S. bases in Japan; (4) rearmament; (5) “history issues”; (6) the “nuclear umbrella”; (7) containment of China and Japan’s deflection from Asia; and (8) “subordinate independence”[3]

I recommend Prof. Dower’s long essay[4] for more information about those issues, which have basically been left unresolved, successive administrations having failed to create a roadmap to address them. Interestingly, Prof. Dower is described indifferently as a Marxist, or liberal, etc. in a critical essay by Tanaka Hidemichi, of the revisionist group Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact[5]. This same group quotes the journalist Henry Scott-Stokes on WW2 various issues on its website, but it appears their methods are far from honest if we are to refer to the reaction of Henry Scott-Stokes[6]!

 Revisionism at work in Japan

 Shinzo Abe’s statement demands that we focus on “history issues,” which are at the center of Japan’s neighbors’ grievances. So far so good, but what was expected, as an apology in the statement, was more precisely the recognition of specific issues related to history, and this did not happen.

 We remember that the U.S. authorities, similarly to what had happened in occupied Germany with Operation Paperclip and Operation Osoaviakhim, had granted immunity to Japanese researchers involved in Unit 731 in exchange for their data on human experimentation.[7] It was much later that scholars, and writers like Shusaku Endo with 海と毒薬 (The Sea and Poison) published works on those experimentations. The role played by the United States in protecting their perpetrators and the silence observed by many parties willing to do so for economical reasons, both in Japan, the United States and the PRC (notably about the Rape of Nanking in the immediate post-war period,) explains in part why it took so long before this issue, forced labor, and the enslavement of women euphemistically called “comfort women” came under the spotlight and became public knowledge.

According to The Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG) at the United States National Archives:

 “Furthermore, there was more systematic destruction of Japanese records pertaining to war crimes in 1945 in response to specific directives to this effect from Imperial Headquarters in Tokyo than was the case in Germany. It should also be noted that vast quantities of Japanese records were returned to Japan without screening or microfilming.”[8]

 

We might ask ourselves at that point why Japan could not have dealt with its past the way Germany did, opening its records. One argument advanced by the previous Japanese administrations for their refusal to recognize even the veracity of witness accounts of crimes such as had been committed by Unit 731, is to flatly state that such matters had been dealt with between states and through the signing of various treaties. Doing otherwise would have in fact opened the way for financial claims, which was one major reason for not opening the debate about this and other issues, including slave labor[9]… until decades later, when the paucity of survivors would guarantee lesser payments.

Another reason is the nostalgia for the pre-war Imperial system mentioned in the introduction. It is not surprising to see words such as “masochistic view of history” being used by people like Fujioka Nobukatsu in An Analysis of Masochistic Historical Views in Japan (Tokyo, Bungeishunju, 1997) or Tanaka Masaaki in What Really Happened in Nanking (Tokyo, Sekai Shuppan, December 2000). They reflect a vision of Japan as the victim and the accent put on a romantic image of the country and its people.

Contributing to this particular reading of history is the idea that after General Douglas MacArthur absolved the Emperor and his family of any responsibility in WW2 events, he absolved the nation and its people, making it easier for many Japanese to consider those issues as having being resolved.

Moreover, the moral issue is rarely mentioned in Japan, officially or not, except by some grassroots movements, and most of those Japanese who are in favor of apologies are in fact expressing concern for Japan’s own trade and diplomatic relations. Morality is central to the German mind, not so, it seems, for the Japanese.

German racism in WW2 was based on the myth of the Untermensch, the sub-human, developed by the Nazis. By categorically rejecting Nazism as the ideology that had brought misery both to millions of people and its own population, Germany after WW2 also rejected racial discrimination and adopted strong laws against it.

However, regarding Japan, it is only recently that debates have started at the Upper House on an anti-racial discrimination bill[10]. This comes 30 years after Japan has signed the International Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination. The bill was introduced by the opposition and is opposed by the parties in power. It also has no punitive provisions. So far, the existing laws Shinzo Abe suggests using to fight discrimination do or will do little to dissuade the use of “No Foreigners” signs in front of various facilities, or hate speech directed at foreigners by various racist groups. Is this reluctance to act both regarding crimes of the past and discrimination of the present a symptom of deeply ingrained racism?

For the Japanese during WW2, their country was a divine Empire. We can look at French history and expressions such as “France, the eldest daughter of the Church” to find a similar fantastic (in the etymological sense) notion that a country is destined and mandated by divine right to rule and guide others. The analogy went farther in that such mandate became convenient for the power that be and in that both monarchy in France and the militarists in Japan did not always see eye to eye with the supposed provider of this divine right, as a comparison between Abe’s statement and the Emperor’s speech of August 15, 2015 shows in the case of Japan. Before WW2, Japan’s industrial and military accomplishments became another motive of pride and contributed to a sense of racial superiority. In addition, I would mention two other factors as having contributed to the sense of superiority demonstrated by the Japanese bureaucratic and military elites of that time. One was the rebuttal they had suffered when they tried proposing a statement of racial equality in the Covenant of the League of Nations in 1919. Their hope was to be considered the equals of the other powers of that time, but their proposal was vetoed by the United States and Great Britain. This was a great cause of resentment for Japan. More importantly, cultural differences and misunderstandings, based on a sense of honor contributed to many war crimes and the mistreatment of prisoners that Japanese soldiers considered as weak because of their unwillingness to consent to collective sacrifice, choosing instead to surrender. Strangely, those values had been inculcated quite recently, at the time of the Restoration of Emperor Meiji, concurrently with the establishment of Shinto as a state religion and an instrument of power. Many Japanese embraced this romantic idea of sacrifice and still consider as anathema the relation of dependence that had befallen them when, under the leadership of Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, they were forced to accept the protection of their recent enemy and occupier, including the continuous presence of military bases and soldiers. This is one of the keys to understand the resentment we talked about. We see this resentment also transferred towards Japan’s neighbors. However victimized they might feel, it is difficult for them to reject Washington, an ally they grew to depend on not only for their security, as we saw with the San Francisco System, but also for best or worse, for their identity as we will see later.  

Shinzo Abe and Ultra-nationalism

There was no surprise in Shinzo Abe’s statement. It had been made clear by the Prime Minister himself, when he addressed a special joint-session of the U.S. Congress on April 29, 2015, that he would uphold the previous Prime Ministers’ statements, expressing deep remorse. He twice used the word “apology” but to refer to his predecessors’ statements, stating in effect that it had been done, that Japan and its neighbors should move on and that “We must not let our children, grandchildren, and even further generations to come, who have nothing to do with that war, be predestined to apologize.”

Shinzo Abe’s goal has long been to remove what he considers a burden of guilt for the next generation and a humiliation. His determination to escape from “masochistic history” and restore a sense of pride to Japan has its roots in his proximity to his grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, who was the number two in the Manchukuo administration and had been imprisoned as Class A war criminal after the end of WW2. Shinzo Abe considered him as a mentor.

But if he expresses warm feeling towards his grandfather and thus naturally rejects the decisions of the Far-East Tribunal as unjust and illegal, he is also close to a number of revisionist organizations, the most famous, however discrete in its dealings, being the ultranationalist organization “Nippon Kaigi” (Japan’s Conference)[11] created in 1997. A great number of members of Parliament belong to this organization, which promotes a return to the Imperial system, focusing again on the education system, towards more discipline and the teaching of “traditional” values such as sacrifice for the nation (a scary proposition if Japan was to send his children to war under a revised Constitution.)

Identity Crisis

Roland Kelts wrote in 2013 an article entitled “The Identity Crisis That Lurks Behind Japan’s Right-Wing Rhetoric”[12] reflecting my own ideas on the matter. What we see from the Japanese far-right movement in all its diversity is a mix of romantic ideas and nostalgia for the past, of reactions to feelings of inadequacies, and to Japan not being able to address other nations with its own voice. This of course is a legacy from the U.S. occupation of Japan, which has in a way never ended. As Roland Kelts says, “It’s hard to imagine another well-meaning nation with such bad options. If Japan renounces its U.S.-made constitution, it risks belligerent response. If it doesn’t, it has no sovereign identity.”

Having a man like Shinzo Abe in power, who exemplifies those confused feelings at a time of heightened tensions in the Asia-Pacific region, who talks about proactive peace but whose actions and decisions are more reactive than proactive except for his determination to revive the glory of Japan and erase the word guilt, is a motive of concern.

Although looking at the various right-wing groups Shinzo Abe and some of the members of his government are associated with, it would be easy to deduct that Japanese society is shifting to the right, as many commentators suggest, but as we will see in the next essay, the number of citizens participating in grassroots activities in favor of human rights, tolerance towards foreigners, etc., far exceeds, in fact, the membership of Nippon Kaigi or fringe groups such as Zaitokukai. In addition, Shinzo Abe’s approval rate is down, especially among the elder electorate who do not want to see a repeat of the militaristic years preceding WW2

 However, there is a particular phenomenon actually similar to what often happens on the web in general, but especially in the blogosphere and on social networks. It is difficult to anticipate to what extent it reflects the popularity of ultranationalist ideas or a simple fad.

Housewives and stay-at-home mothers spend a lot of time in front of their computers interacting with “netto-uyo” (rightwing activists on the web) sites. Japan Today, on March 6, 2014 mentioned an article of Shukan Gendai (March 8, 2014) where Licca Kayama, a clinical psychiatrist often quoted in the media said:

 “The housewives I’ve encountered who have been drawn to the ‘netto-uyo’ are serious types and hard workers. But they have the sentiment that ‘I do my best but am unappreciated.’ They feel their lives are boring. From thinking ‘There’s something wrong with society,’ this leads them to ‘The media’s not reporting the truth,’ and while these matters have no direct bearing on their lives, they become agitated.”[13]

 By focusing on perceived problems in society that have no direct impact on their lives and embracing a populist position, they can chat without having to exert critical thinking, putting for example the blame for many problems (crime, etc.) on foreigners in general. Xenophobia, which was not previously as pronounced as nationalism, is becoming more prevalent. This phenomenon is quite similar to what happened in the 50’s when women started supporting in mass new religions. One of them in particular was to produce the lay-Buddhist organization Sokka-Gakai behind the New Komei Party, now a member of the coalition in power in Japan! Women can become convenient propagandists as members of parent-teachers associations for example, for the conservative ideology of the Nippon Kaigi, a revisionist movement regrouping a great number of Diet members and government ministers. Such women are also expressing a feeling common among Japanese who are watching China overcoming Japan economically. People in their 50s have worked hard and now see Japan declining and the promises of life-long employment gone. They lay blame on the outside, an easier solution than trying analyzing the root causes of the problems Japan is facing, which include the Amakudari system (or revolving doors politics), and non-transparent archaic forms of management. As someone once said, they worked hard but not smart, not developing skills such as critical thinking, or adopting a more international perspective in the 21^st Century digital age.

The second part of this essay will put the spotlight on many personalities, organizations or grassroots movements representing in fact a much larger segment of Japanese society than its more extreme and vocal elements such as those riding in black trucks, blaring military music in the center of the cities, or suit-wearing members of ultraconservative groups.

 We must concede that Shinzo Abe is sincere in his wish to improve relations with Japan’s neighbors, even if the exact nature of those relations as he see them, and apart from their “peaceful” and “productive” character, remains to be seen. He has shown this wish through his many trips to the Asia-Pacific countries. But on the other hand, he is representing the values of his conservative electorate and his attempts to satisfy both ambitions seem doomed to failure. His strategy to change the Constitution by first proposing a new interpretation of Article 9 and his insistence on upholding the Murayama statement of 1995 while eliminating apologies from his own statement but keeping the word remorse denotes a certain skill with words, but as Michael Cucek wrote in Shisaku[14], Shinzo Abe benefits from having no competition. Cucek suggests reassessing the Cabinet support ratings for Abe as being nominal support as opposed to real.

 Japan is going through a series of rapid changes and I do not see how ultraconservatism with its inherent inertia will be able to win the hearts of the youths who are more willing to embrace change and adopt progressive ideas such as multiculturalism and cultural diplomacy. Shinzo Abe might actually have to fight to stay in power in the months to come.

 

[1]  The San Francisco System: Past, Present, Future in U.S.-Japan-China Relations サンフランシスコ体制　米日中関係の過去、現在、そして未, John W. Dower, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 12, Issue 8, No. 2, February 24, 2014

[2] Idem

[3] Idem

[4] http://www.japanfocus.org/-John_W_-Dower/4079/article.html

[5] http://www.sdh-fact.com/essay-article/354

[6] http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/article/1508692/lost-translation-british-journalist-shocked-japanese-book-he-dictated

[7] The World: Revisiting World War II Atrocities; Comparing the Unspeakable to the Unthinkable, Ralph Blumenthal, The New York Times, March 7, 1999 (http://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/07/weekinreview/world-revisiting-world-war-ii-atrocities-comparing-unspeakable-unthinkable.html)

[8] http://www.archives.gov/iwg/reports/japanese-interim-report-march-2002-1.html

[9] http://atimes.com/2015/08/ww-ii-japan-slave-labor-what-to-make-of-mitsubishi-materials-apology/

[10] http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/08/04/national/politics-diplomacy/debate-anti-discrimination-bill-begins-diet/

[11] http://www.nipponkaigi.org/

[12] http://world.time.com/2013/05/31/the-identity-crisis-that-lurks-behind-japans-right-wing-rhetoric/

[13] http://www.japantoday.com/category/kuchikomi/view/husbands-aghast-at-wives-infatuation-to-rightwing-causes

[14] http://shisaku.blogspot.jp/2015/07/what-has-been-abe-cabinets-real.html

 

                        by  Bill Lee

 

He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot will be victorious.

— Sun Tzu

 

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has released his much awaited statement on the 70^th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Expectations for it ran the whole gamut, from very low – fears of a new outbreak of tensions if the statement turned its back on previous apology statements – to very high – hopes for a lasting period of reconciliation with a full-throated apology. While the fallout from the statement is still waiting to be seen, immediate reactions to it have been predictable. Xinhua rightly described the statement as being full of “rhetorical twists,” South Korean President Park Guen-hye said it left “much to be desired,” and the United States, Britain, and Australia welcomed the statement. However, none of the reactions have seemed to understand the statement from the Japanese context, and thus have missed what Abe was really trying to say. What is needed is a closer reading of the statement to understand Abe’s argument. In this paper I will first look at the buildup to Abe’s statement, provide a close reading of the actual language and arguments in the declaration, and consider China’s options from now in dealing with Japan.

 

Buildup

 

Worries about Abe’s 70^th anniversary statement were spurred when the Abe administration launched a panel to look at the way the 1993 Kono Statement on Japan’s sex slaves was drafted. That statement and the way compensation was offered to the former sex slaves is a very good example of the deft – or tricky – “end run” maneuvers in Japanese diplomacy. Kono’s recognition of and apology for the military-controlled brothel system were certainly sincere and well-intentioned, and Kono himself, the only Liberal Democratic Party president not to become prime minister, has always had a dovish reputation within conservative circles. Japan could have resolved the sex slave problem then in 1993 by reinforcing Kono’s statement with appropriate compensation to the former sex slaves. However, the government, still bound, as with an albatross around its neck, to its position that all redress claims had been settled with the San Francisco Peace Treaty and other post-war agreements, refused to offer compensation from official government coffers, but instead hit on the alternative of providing its compensation through a private fund, the Asian Women’s Fund, which the government tried to sell as a fund representing all of the Japanese people, and not just the government, and thus an expression of the contrition of the nation as a whole. Not unsurprisingly many of the former comfort women were not taken in and rejected the offering. Although Abe has been often slammed by critics who claim he is trying to “whitewash” the issue, Abe has consistently maintained in Diet testimony that his administration will not alter the Kono Statement and that he is “deeply pained to think of the comfort women who experienced immeasurable pain and suffering.”

 

Abe’s grip on reality took a turn for the worse when he claimed in Diet testimony in 2013 that there was no established legal definition of “aggression.” Here Abe was clearly parroting the ultranationalist view that there were no internationally accepted statues in international law on aggression and that Japan did not invade China but was merely fighting a war of self-defense against Western aggressors. The absurdity of these claims was even refuted by the staunchly conservative government supporter the Yomiuri Shimbun, which in an editorial on August 7, 2015 stated:

[A]cts of sending troops into territories of a foreign country and infringing on its sovereignty have been defined by historians as ‘aggression’…the series of acts from the Manchurian Incident onward obviously constituted ‘aggression.’ It is irrational to refute that it was for the purpose of defense…It is not acceptable to argue defiantly that the United States and European countries also committed aggression. It is also wrong to assert that Japan waged the war for the liberation of Asia.

Abe nimbly defused the issue by saying that the “interpretation of history should be left to historians” and that since he is “not a historian,” he is not in a position to judge.

 

 

Abe also repeatedly said that his war statement would be “future-oriented,” which most observers believed that to mean Abe would not apologize for the war and would instead emphasize Japan’s international contributions since the war and presumably into the future. Indeed, at his much anticipated speech at the 60^th Bandung Conference in April 2015, Abe offered no apology and only “deep remorse” over the war. Unlike former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s 2005 Bandung speech, Abe did not use the key words “colonial rule and aggression” or “heartfelt apology,” which China-baiter Koizumi did.

 

Thus the stage was set. Abe also made a closely watched speech to the US Congress at the end of April this year that seemed to provide further hints of what he would say in his war statement. He convened a panel – what is life without another panel – to give him their opinion on what he should include in his statement. And in the week or so leading up to August 14, when the statement was to be released, the news surfaced that Emperor Akihito himself would offer an apology for the war. This would clearly be a counterbalance to an apology-less statement from Abe that could save Japan’s skin.

 

Close Reading

 

The first sentence of Abe’s statement is significant: “On the 70^th anniversary of the end of the war, we must calmly reflect upon the road to war.” Abe is poised to give a cool, objective account of the war. This is in contrast to the Murayama Statement, which begins with the declaration that “my heart is overwhelmed by a flood of emotions.” Abe then sets the historical context for the war by stressing the encroachment of Western powers, with “waves of colonial rule surg[ing] toward Asia in the 19^th century.” Abe asserts that Japan modernized after the opening of the country by the Black Ships to protect itself, noting that Japan was able to keeps its independence. The idea that Japan was a savior country in the eyes of the colonized is introduced when Abe says Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War “gave encouragement to many people under colonial rule.” This is the standard nationalist line: Japan modernized to protect itself from predators and not to get in on the imperialist game itself, and Japan’s victory over Russia was due to its superiority, which it was, rather than to Russia’s long supply lines from St. Petersburg and military incompetence under a corrupt and dying Tsarist reign.

 

After briefly mentioning World War I and its aftermath, Abe discusses the run-up to World War II. The standard nationalist view, of course, is that Japan was forced to invade Manchuria and attack the United States at Pearl Harbor because of the economic stranglehold being put on Japan by the West and America’s oil boycott. Abe follows that line in a muted way. He notes that Japan at first “kept steps” with the international community in seeking world peace through the League of Nations and other efforts. “However,” he says, “with the Great Depression setting in and the Western countries launching economic blocs by involving colonial economies, Japan’s economy suffered a major blow.” He then says Japan became isolated and attempted to break out of the “deadlock” (ikizumari) with force, Japan’s own political system unable to control these moves. At the end of this analysis, Abe grudgingly admits Japan “took the wrong course” and advanced towards war. Although Abe concedes Japan was wrong, the tone of the description is oddly removed and passive. By using “Japan” (日本) rather than “our country” (我が国) as the subject for the sentences in these two paragraphs, Abe conveys the feeling that Japan was some kind of disengaged historical entity, a different country from the one of which he is now prime minister. Part of this aura of disconnectedness is due to the nature of the Japanese language, which emphasizes objective description over subjective explanation, but there are certainly ways around that, and I believe Abe intentionally sought to describe Japan in an “historical context” of being isolated and without options.

 

That is it for Abe’s explanation of the historical context for Japan’s belligerence. Abe’s statement that Japan “gradually [italics mine] transformed itself into a challenger to the new international order” surely surprised Koreans, who saw their country annexed by Japan in 1910. The interbellum period between the two world wars and into the Second World War indeed saw Japan enter the darkest chapter in its history. Yet in its early wars with China and Russia, Japan emerged with an excellent international reputation, at least according to Western observers of the wars at that time. The military historian S.C.M. Paine notes in her book The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 that Japanese soldiers, unlike later Russian soldiers, did not pillage the countryside but paid for all the food they took, and treated Chinese prisoners of war relatively humanely, though that is also disputed. The point is that Japan, intoxicated with power and conquest, changed into an evil force. That is something Abe and other nationalists cannot admit about their grandfathers’ generation, whom they see as kindly and noble (re: the famous photograph of Abe sitting on the knees of his grandfather Nobusuke Kishi, once held as a war criminal). They will never change their views, which are so deeply entrenched in their psyches.

 

Abe next offers his condolences to the war dead in three poorly written paragraphs, which likely satisfy no one. Abe (or of course the actual writers of the statement) probably considered long and hard whether to mention the Japanese war dead first and then the dead in the invaded countries or vice versa. Quibbles can be made about the order, but I do not think it matters much if the passages are well written. The detailed description of the suffering by the Japanese — the number (three million), location (battlefields, Hiroshima, Okinawa, etc.), and degree of suffering (extreme cold or heat, starvation and disease, etc.) — paints the Japanese as victims. The next paragraph focusing on the overseas war dead seems almost like an afterthought. It begins strangely: “Also in countries that fought against Japan….” The “also” makes it seem like just supplementary information, and the sentence order — “countries that fought against Japan” — gives the impression that Japan had a rather passive role. The right note would have been: “The countries that Japan invaded….” Rather than “Also in countries,” the Japanese original is “…kuniguni demo”, (even in countries). Why “even in countries”? Why not “in other countries as well”?

 

While lacking numbers and types and degree of suffering, except for “numerous innocent victims” and “severe deprivation of food,” this second paragraph does something remarkable: it mentions the sex slaves. Though the phrase “sex slaves” or the euphemism “comfort women” are not used, it is clear that the “women behind the battlefields” refers to the sex slaves. People can argue that they should have been explicitly named, but this is the first time sex slaves have been referenced in any of these prime ministerial statements.

 

The third paragraph begins with a very clear and unequivocal admission of wrongdoing: “Upon the innocent people did our country inflict immeasurable damage and suffering.” Nothing could be more straightforward than that. Here would have been the most logical and opportune point to offer an apology: “We caused immeasurable damage and suffering; I offer my heartfelt apologies for that.” It would have been a powerful moment that assuaged many wounds. Instead, with unintended irony Abe says that all this has made him “speechless” (kotoba o ushinai). A novel reason for not making an apology emerges. All of this grief has made Abe literally unable to make an apology because he has been rendered “speechless.” I wish Abe or the statement drafters had been a little more attentive here.

 

The next sentence is haiku-like in its brevity but seemingly pregnant with meaning: “The peace we enjoy today exists only upon such precious sacrifices. And therein lies the origin of postwar Japan.” (これほどまでの尊い犠牲の上に、現在の平和がある。これが、戦後日本の原点であります.) The “sore ga” in the original Japanese presumably refers to peace built on the sacrifices of the war dead. But what was the origin of postwar Japan? What was the psyche of the Japanese just after the war, particularly towards the countries they had invaded? Perhaps most ordinary Japanese were too preoccupied with just surviving and wanted to forget the nightmare of the last days of the war. But what of the political elite? Much has been discussed about the degree of guilt, shame, and sense of responsibility the elites felt about the war. Ruth Benedict of course maintained that Japanese felt shame rather than guilt, thus explaining a predisposition not to apologize out of guilt but to feel “deep remorse” out of a feeling of shame. Masao Maruyama famously pointed out that none of the war leaders felt a sense of responsibility for the war because everything was done in the name of the Emperor. Thus when the Emperor was not made to take responsibility at the Tokyo Tribunal, it obviated the need for any leader to take responsibility. However, these psychological assessments are difficult to validate. From a purely instrumental view, the postwar political leaders like Nobusuke Kishi and Shigeru Yoshida, supported and funded by the United States to stand against communist regimes in the Soviet Union and China and leftist groups in Japan, which wanted Japan to atone for the war, sought nothing more than to conceal Japan’s actions during the war, particularly their own. Moreover, South Korea and China were not in a position to demand apologies. South Korea had to deal with the Korean War, and the later regime of Park Chung-hee made no demands on Japan because of Park’s affinity for Korea’s former colonial overseer. Mao Zedong and the PRC were of course preoccupied with the civil war and so on, and were disinclined to make demands for an apology, especially considering the well-known fact now that Mao kept his troops from fully engaging the Japanese invaders and that the Kumomintang army bore the brunt for the resistance. Thus a number of purely instrumental reasons buried the need for apologies for the war.

 

Abe next paraphrases Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, quoting directly from it in saying that Japan will “never again resort to any form of the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes.” He then says Japan “made this pledge” (そう誓いました) with “deep repentance for the war.” However, a “pledge,” although solemn, is not bound by law. Abe has turned the Constitution, which is the fundamental law of the land, into a “pledge.” Perhaps this is why he believes the Constitution can be changed simply by a reinterpretation of it by a sitting government.

 

The next paragraph has received the most attention. It is an apology, or at first glance, seems so. He uses the centerpiece phrases “deep remorse” and “heartfelt apology.” Yet it turns out that it is not an apology from him directly but a statement that “[s]uch a position articulated by the previous Cabinets will remain unshakable into the future.” It is not a personal apology directly from Abe, but a recognition that past administrations have apologized and will continue to do so in the future. Abe had hinted that he would not necessarily use the language of previous statements of apology, but he used all four key phrases in his statement: “aggression (shinryaku),” “colonial domination (shokuminchi shihai),” “deep remorse (tsusetsu na hansei),” and “apology (owabi).” Perhaps this was Abe’s “Plan B” version of his statement. With plunging approval ratings caused by his administration’s attempt to ram through his security-related legislation through parliament and the prospect of a visit to China in September that he did not want to endanger, Abe may have felt he needed to strike a conciliatory line by at least half-apologizing. It was another great irony as Abe tried to stave off his falling popularity, which is due to his China-inspired “war legislation,” by somewhat apologizing to save his trip to China, which he hopes will help him regain the trust of the Japanese (and Chinese) public. And he did not want to be hung out to dry by the possibility that the Emperor himself would offer an apology. In the end, however, the indirect apology was a politically expedient move that satisfied neither the Chinese or Koreans nor Japanese nationalists.

 

However, the key passage in the entire statement for me is the next paragraph. “[N]o matter kind of efforts we may make,” Abe says, “the sorrows of those who lost their family members and the painful memories of those who underwent immense sufferings by the destruction war will never be healed” (italics mine). That, in a nutshell, is how Abe views apologizing: no matter how often or deeply Japan apologizes, the wounds will never be healed; therefore, it is does no good (shikata ga nai) to continue apologizing. Indeed apologizing could be counterproductive. As Jennifer Lind points out in her book Sorry States, every time a Japanese leader apologizes for the war, some influential right-wing figure or organization refutes the apology, spurring charges that Japan is really unrepentant. Apologizing starts a downward spiral of denial, recrimination, strained relations, and so on. Apologizing, Abe seems to believe, is a broken record that continues playing the same old tune.

 

Then if not apologizing, what? Abe makes that clear next: expressing gratitude. Abe marvels at “how much emotional struggle” there must have been for the “Chinese people who underwent all the sufferings of the war” to become “so tolerant nevertheless.” Because of this tolerance, Abe says, Japan was able to “return to the international community.” Therefore, Abe concludes, “Japan would like to express its heartfelt gratitude to all the nations and all the people who made every effort for reconciliation.” Despite singling out China’s suffering, Abe particularly notes the “goodwill and assistance” extended by the United States, Australia, and the European nations, nations to which Japan was most interested in exporting its products in the postwar period. So it is gratitude rather than an apology that Abe would like to offer.

 

With an admission of guilt and an apology comes the need to provide compensation; with an expression of gratitude comes the desire to provide gifts. Japan has officially said that its compensation requirements have been all settled by past treaties and agreements. But gifts can be offered through official development assistance (ODA), which Japan certainly extended to China and South Korea as de facto compensation. In the end, Japan would have been better off calling all the billions of dollars it extended to China war reparations rather than ODA.

 

Abe spends the rest of the statement making his “future-oriented” promises about what lies ahead. He says that Japan will work for nuclear nonproliferation, the rights of women, alluding again to the sex slaves, free trade, poverty eradication, health care, education, and, finally, peace.

 

Options for China

 

Not surprisingly former Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama was critical of Abe’s statement. Giving the pithiest appraisal of it, Murayama said, “It was full of flowery language, and I couldn’t understand what he was trying to say.” Britain, Australia, and the United States welcomed the statement, South Korea gave a “prudent” response, and China zeroed in on the lack of a personal apology from Abe.

 

With all the buildup to Abe’s statement and now that it has been made public, the ball seems to be in China’s court. What must President Xi Jinping be thinking about the statement? Perhaps not much. It was reported that when he was Hong Kong governor, Chris Patten complained to Deng Xiaoping how complicated things were in Hong Kong. Deng snorted, and said, “If you think it is difficult running Hong Kong, think what it is like trying to run all of China.” Xi Jinping surely has a lot on his plate now — the flagging economy, the stock market plunge, the Tianjin explosions, and so on. How must he see his options? There are three obvious options: 1) take a hardline, reject the statement, and demand a correct historical understanding; 2) keep up the pressure but show a willingness to engage Japan politically and economically; 3) accept Abe’s statement, put the past behind, and seek reconciliation. The first option would be emotionally satisfying, popular with public sentiment, especially the Weibo kind, and not in China’s economic interests. The third could win Xi Jinping a Nobel Prize for peace, placate the region’s apprehensions about China’s perceived potential for aggression, and open up a fresh new era in Sino-Japanese relations. The second option is the most likely. China has already ramped down tensions around the Senkaku Islands and, with Xi’s friendlier demeanor toward Abe at Bandung, indicated a more pragmatic course towards Japan. Xi knows China needs Japanese investment. Apparently, Abe’s visit to China during the ceremonies marking the “Victory Day of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japan” in early September is a done deal. Like German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who attended a ceremony marking Russia’s victory over Germany but skipped the military parade, Abe will attend a ceremony or two commemorating the end of the war in China but will not attend the military parade. Abe’s visit at that time would certainly put Abe in the position of a supplicant and Xi in the position of a forgiving “emperor.” Through crafty diplomacy, Xi is in the driver’s seat.

 

Ghost Fleet, a new techno- military thriller written by two military analysts has taken Washington by storm. It is supposed to be a prophetic tale of how China overcomes America’s military might by technology to win the opening rounds in a future war against the United States. As a novel, it is lousy, as all such thrillers are, but it tries to show how the seeming technological and military superiority and hubris of a future China might all just be illusionary because, after all, America has tremendous military power and is not going to roll over and play dead. The book’s intended message is that military expansion is, in the end, a fool’s errand. It is hoped that Abe and his nationalists and Xi Jinping and the PLA will take notice, so that both sides can go back to the business of doing business.