Monday, May 24, 2004By RICHARD HALLORAN
Special to The Japan Times
A quiet pride is evinced in the dispatch of Japan's Self-Defense Forces troops for peacekeeping in Iraq even though the polls say a bare majority opposes the deployment. Says a business executive: "That's their profession; that's what they've been trained for."
A debate over revising the pacifist Constitution, particularly Article 9 -- that forbids the use of military power to resolve disputes -- is under way. Some say an amendment is unnecessary, that a mere reinterpretation would permit Japanese forces to take part in collective security.
The need for that security arises largely from a perceived threat from North Korea. "We are angry about North Korea, not frightened of them," says a retired diplomat, pointing to abductions of Japanese, the launching of North Korean missiles over Japan and North Korea's plans to acquire nuclear weapons.
Even so, a recent poll showed that 73 percent of the Japanese approved Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's trip to North Korea to seek the return of abductees or their family members held captive there.
On a wider front, Japanese say their nation should be more active internationally. Another executive says: "Japan should make more of an international contribution." Many Japanese still wince over criticism that they contributed only money ($ 13 billion) to the allied effort in the Persian Gulf War of 1991 while the soldiers of other nations died in battle.
Japan has begun drafting a new five-year plan on defense that will focus on forces for peacekeeping and reconstruction in war-torn countries. The Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, is preparing its delegation at the United Nations to take a seat on the U.N. Security Council next year.
When the U.N. was founded -- 60 years ago next year -- Japan was named an enemy nation. Japanese seek to have that derogatory label removed. Moreover, many Japanese contend that their nation should be a permanent member of the Security Council along with Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.
Older Japanese point to a generational change in which younger Japanese, meaning those born after the end of World War II in 1945, are entering the establishment that governs Japan. They are said to be more assertive and less constrained by today's rituals.
Hiroshi Nakanishi, a 41-one year old political scientist at Kyoto University, was quoted in a Tokyo newspaper: "We instead prefer to be rational, and we think it's all right to change what can no longer meet the times."
Underlying this new self-confidence is the apparent recovery of the Japanese economy after 15 years in the doldrums, although some economists, Japanese and Western, contend that the upswing is illusory and Japan has yet to undertake serious reforms. Amid upbeat indicators, two things have not changed:
The sleaze in Japanese politics. Several Japanese leaders, of the ruling and opposition parties, have been forced to resign recently because they missed paying mandatory premiums into a pension fund.
The absence of government plans to assemble an armed force commensurate with the nation's population and economic strength. South Koreans, North Koreans and Chinese have repeatedly expressed concern about this, even as some American neoconservatives have advocated that Japan obtain nuclear weapons.
The evidence of a coming military buildup, however, is not there -- not in law, not in the policy of any political party and surely not in public opinion. It would be a good bet that blood would run in the streets if Japan's government sought to install the kind of conscription necessary to expand its military strength beyond that of the SDF.
The same would be true if Japan, with its nuclear-allergy legacy following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, set out to acquire nuclear weapons. After its devastating defeat in World War II, Japan wrapped itself in a pacifist cocoon, emphasized trade and avoided offending either suppliers of materials or customers in markets abroad.
After Japan's economy blossomed in the 1970s, there was speculation that Japan would assert leadership and possibly seek dominion in Asia. One joke after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 held that the Cold War between Russia and America was over, and Japan won.
The Japanese, however, were not ready for international responsibility despite the urgings of nationalist leaders like Ichiro Ozawa of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, who wanted Japan to become a "normal" nation. Today, that has changed, and Japan seems ready to take on that task.
Richard Halloran, formerly a correspondent for Business Week, The Washington Post and The New York Times, is a freelance journalist.
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