Japan seeks parasol in shade of US umbrella

February 26, 2003

By Richard Lloyd Parry and Robert Thomson

IF SHIGERU ISHIBA, Japan’s defence minister, was having a difficult morning yesterday, the signs were subtle.

There was the note slipped into his hand by an underling during the middle of an interview with The Times, and the minister’s sudden disappearance from the room for an urgent telephone call or off-stage conversation.

And then there was the small white tube, a remedy for nicotine cravings commonly used by Japanese salarymen, which Mr Ishiba sucked on intermittently.

But if anyone could be forgiven for needing a fag yesterday morning, it was Japan’s defence minister. It was Mr Ishiba’s first interview with a Western newspaper and it came on one of the most trying days of his career.

Less than 24 hours earlier, in South Hamyong province in the eastern part of North Korea, a 2.3 tonne Silkworm anti-ship missile had been launched into the Sea of Japan.

As the latest in a series of carefully calculated provocations, it sent shivers of alarm through ministries and intelligence agencies all over the world. But no one faced a tougher task than Mr Ishiba.

As Director-General of the Japan Defence Agency — his official title — he lives and breathes the paradoxes and euphemisms that dominate his country's security policy.

With 240,000 members, Japan’s so-called “Self- Defence Forces” (JSDF) represent one of the most formidable armed forces in the world: and yet Article Nine of Japan's Constitution explictly forbids the maintenance of “war potential”.

To maintain this fiction, the JSDF are permitted to operate only within the strictest limits, to the extent that, if a North Korean missiles made it over the Sea of Japan in the direction of, say, Tokyo, they would be forbidden from acting until after it had been fired.

The head of the world’s most powerful non-military military force, a self-defence force incapable of defending itself, is well aware of the contradictions in his position.

In his interview with The Times yesterday he floated an intriguing and far-reaching idea: that, after 57 years under the protective umbrella of the United States, the time has come for Japan to develop an independent means of preventing missile attack.

“Until the other side actually starts something we cannot exercise self-defence,” he said.

“It has been agreed that Japan is the shield and the US is the arrow, but we have to discuss whether this is adequate or not. Henceforth, this will be discussed in parliament.”

Japan calls for fewer US troops on Okinawa

By David Pilling in Tokyo
Published: Feb 03, 2003

Yoriko Kawaguchi, Japan's foreign minister, said yesterday that her government would strive to reduce the US military presence on Okinawa, where nearly 60 per cent of American troops stationed in Japan are based.

The government in Tokyo has long come under pressure from Okinawa, Japan's southernmost island, to spread the burden of hosting US troops more evenly throughout Japan. Although Okinawa accounts for just 0.6 per cent of the country's land area, about three-quarters of land occupied by US forces is on the island.

Okinawa, which is heavily dependent on tax transfers from Tokyo, often in the form of public works programmes, has an ambiguous relationship with mainland Japan with which it feels only loosely connected.

Yesterday, Keiichi Inamine, Okinawa's governor, told Mrs Kawaguchi during a visit to the island: "It is important for consistent progress to be made, and the issue must be dealt with not only as an issue of Okinawa, but of Japan as a whole."

Mr Inamine is pressing for a 15-year limit on the use by the US military of a planned new military-civilian airport to be built on reclaimed land at an estimated cost of Y330bn (£1.7bn). The US has so far refused to accept any time limit.

A US government official said Washington was not averse to redeploying troops in the region but there had been no specific approach from the Japanese government about reducing the troop presence in Okinawa.

It would be difficult for Japan to find room for new bases on its crowded mainland, the US official said. Nor had there been any indication from the Philippines that its government would be prepared to re-establish bases there, a proposal floated by a number of Japanese politicians. The US official said that rebuilding a military presence in the Philippines would suit Washington's strategic goals.

US bases in Japan, which are maintained largely at the expense of Japanese taxpayers, have long been controversial, partly because of aircraft noise. In Okinawa, there has also been deep sensitivity over the issue of crime, particularly after the rape of a 12-year-old girl by three US servicemen in 1995.

The Japanese have attacked the US military over such incidents. Suspected US offenders are often disciplined under US military codes rather than being handed over to the Japanese police.