US marines in Japan facing curfew due to rising crime in Okinawa

TOKYO (AFP) Jun 03, 2004

Junior-ranked US marines in Japan will be slapped with a night-time curfew from next week in an effort to curb rising crimes involving servicemen on the strategic island of Okinawa, officials said Thursday.

The prefectural administration of Okinawa said the curfew would be imposed as most crimes committed by US servicemen tended to take place after midnight.

"We hope that it will help prevent the recurrence of crimes," Tadanobu Higa, director of military base affairs for the Okinawa prefectural government, told AFP by telephone.

"Educational programs by the US forces in the past have failed to produce results. The number of crimes is still on the increase," he added.

Offences committed by servicemen have fueled strong protests among islanders against the concentration of US troops on the Okinawan chain, particulary after the 1995 gang-rape of a 12-year-old local girl by three US servicemen.

Okinawa, located within the striking distance of China and the Korean peninsula hosts roughly two-thirds of the 47,000 US troops in Japan. It remained under post-World War II US military occupation until 1972.

US marines with the rank of sergeant or lower stationed in Japan will be barred from going off base from midnight to 5 am in an indefinite curfew beginning on June 11, the US military daily Stars and Stripes reported.

But non-commissioned officers, who have demonstrated "integrity, maturity, reliability and exceptional performance" may be exempted from the ban, it added.

It is the first time for a curfew to be imposed on US service personnel in Okinawa, since the Group-of-Eight (G8) summit held there in 2000 amid airtight security.

Lieutenant General Robert Blackman, commander of US Marine Corps in Japan, told the GI daily that the curfew was in response to crimes involving US service members in Japan, which have been on the rise since 1998.

"This is not a form of punishment," Blackman was quoted as saying. "Its a way of controlling where liberty is conducted during those peak times.

"These incidents have a negative effect on our relationship here and I want to turn it around; I want to push that curve in the other direction," he told the paper.

According to the Okinawan prefectural government, 112 US service members were arrested in 2003, including 48 held on suspicion of theft.

The annual total has steadily increased since 1998 from a steady total of 40 in the previous three years, during which antipathy toward US troops remained fierce after the gang rape.

On the move after decades of pacifism

Monday, May 24, 2004
By 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.

The Right-Wing Group Behind the Super Patriotic Japanese Textbook that Whitewashes History

David McNeill, in the South China Morning Post (April 23, 2004):

The rain beat down last week on a forest of umbrellas filing through the modern, neon-lit streets of central Tokyo, but the message coming from inside the cavernous Kudan Kaikan Hall was an oddly old-fashioned one, reminiscent of 19th-century jingoism.

"Why are we teaching our children to hate Japan?" thundered one speaker. "America, China and Britain don't teach their kids to hate their countries. We should be telling them that this is an amazing country and that they should love it with all their hearts."

Another said: "Compared with the colonial rule of the European countries and America, Japan's rule of Asia was humane. If we had not colonised Korea, America or Europe would have. We have nothing to be ashamed of."

This is the world of the Society for Textbook Reform, which organised the conference, where Japan was not the brutal aggressor in the second world war but the liberator, fighting to defend itself from the US and European powers, and free Asia from the yoke of white imperialism; where imperial troops were not guilty, as most historians suggest, of some of the worst war crimes of the 20th century, but the "normal excesses" of armies everywhere; where Japan's "masochistic" emphasis on atonement is leading to the "moral decline" of its young.

It's a message not restricted to the 1,200 mostly middle-aged men in the hall, the sort of group that might be called angry white males in the west. After eight years building a grassroots movement to radically change the teaching of history in schools, the society is aiming to go mainstream in high schools across Japan. And with friends in high places, many believe they have a good chance of success.

"We're confident we can change the teaching of history in schools here," says one of the society's leading intellectual lights, Nobukatsu Fujioka, a professor of education at the elite Tokyo University.

So, does this mean Japan should hide its war crimes? "Great Britain committed war crimes," he says. "America, too. Regrettably, many nations commit war crimes. My concern is that Japanese children are taught to hate their country. They're taught that only Japan was wrong in the war. Don't all countries use history to instil pride in students? The aim of history teaching is to prepare people for citizenship. The facts of history are limitless. We can't teach them all, so we have to make choices."

Professor Fujioka's group, led by openly right-wing scholars, dropped off the media radar three years ago after it caused a storm of protest across Asia with its New History textbook. Approved for use by the Japanese Ministry of Education, the textbook was accused of whitewashing history.

The Japanese invasion of Asia was changed to "war in Asia and the Pacific" and the word "invaded" changed to "advanced".

References to Unit 731, a bio-warfare unit that author Daniel Barenblatt recently said may have been responsible for one million Chinese deaths, were dropped.

The infamous 1937 Nanking massacre, when some historians estimate rampaging imperial troops slaughtered up to 300,000 Chinese, was changed to the "Nanking incident" and the number of casualties removed, with the strong implication that China fabricated the episode.

References to "comfort women", or an estimated 200,000 sexual slaves from across Asia forced to service imperial troops, were dropped. The comfort women, said Professor Fujioka in a famous essay, were prostitutes: "There is no need to teach children these kinds of facts."

The 2001 campaign is widely believed abroad to have ended in failure after teachers and local activists blocked the use of the textbook in all but about 10 of Japan's 10,000 middle schools, but that's not how the society or its opponents view it.

New History has sold nearly 750,000 copies commercially since its release and its popularity has forced the makers of the seven other history textbooks in use to tone down their own accounts of Japan's wartime history. The society recently once again submitted its revised textbook to the Education Ministry for approval, and it believes this time around it's got it right. "More and more people share our opposition to instilling self-hatred in our children," Professor Fujioka recently told author John Nathan. "I am confident it won't be that long until New History sets the standard."

But why has this relatively tiny organisation, run by academics and volunteers out of a nondescript building in Tokyo, had such an impact on the history debate?

Yoshifumi Tawara, who runs Children and Textbooks Japan Network 21, a group opposed to the textbook, has an answer: "The society likes to see itself as being up against a liberal establishment that controls education in Japan, but much of the establishment backs what it is doing."

The establishment includes up to 100 lawmakers from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, who are sympathetic to the society's goals, the chairman of Japan's largest business federation, the Keidanren, and the mass circulation Sankei newspaper. Thousands of businesses have funded the society's activities, including the free distribution of more than 700,000 copies of a nationalist history book by society member Kanji Nishio to schools across the country. Pitted against this well-funded campaign is a loose network of teachers, trade unionists and campaigners like Mr Tawara.

But the society's campaign to revise Japan's troubled past for a source of national pride has also been fuelled by the rich vein of hypocrisy many in Japan see in the actions of its staunchest post- war ally, the US. Many of its key supporters, including best-selling manga artist Yoshinori Kobayashi, slam the refusal of the US to apologise for the 1945 fire bombing of Tokyo, which incinerated an estimated 100,000 Tokyo civilians, or the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, incidents both he and Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara (who also supports the textbook movement) describe as "racist".

Parallels have been drawn among the textbook movement's supporters to the bombing of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the society's emotional message has found an increasingly willing audience among the millions disillusioned with Japan's traditional subservience to Washington.

"America cannot criticise anyone," says 32-year-old graphic designer Chiyoko Fujimoto, who regularly reads Kobayashi's comics. "They bomb and kill when they want. Why should we take all the criticism for what we did years ago?"

Mr Tawara also says there has been a sea change in the popular conscience since Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's failed attempt to mend diplomatic relations with North Korea. "The Japanese media has focused strongly on Japan as the victim of crimes by North Korea, particularly the kidnapping of its citizens, so the memories of what Japan did in Asia is fading. Many young people have little idea of what went on in the past."

This growing national amnesia, which the new textbook threatens to worsen, fuels growing anti-Japanese sentiment in China, which has watched Tokyo wriggle out of hundreds of war compensation claims. "The whole trouble is that Japan has never faced up to the past the way Germany has," says Arthur Titherington, who fought and lost a compensation claim in the Tokyo courts and who is chairman of the Japanese Labour Camp Survivors' Association of Britain.

"I think it's a great shame that Japan is prepared to let its children live in ignorance. They just don't know what they did."

'Historic Act' May Keep Sea Creatures from being History

April 08, 2004
Notebook
The Daily Journal
By Dennis Pfaff

SAN FRANCISCO - Dugongs, by all accounts, are gentle creatures, largely content to munch sea grass on the bottom of ocean shallows.

Once upon a time, dugongs allegedly fooled what were presumably desperately lonely sailors into mistaking them for mermaids. Now, according to environmentalists, at least some varieties of these huge relatives of the manatee are themselves in danger of disappearing into mythology.

Of particular concern is the Okinawa dugong, a subspecies that may include as few as 50 animals, according to a lawsuit filed last fall in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. The Okinawa variety is part of a larger population of dugong listed as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

Dugongs can live as long as 70 years and grow to nearly 1,000 pounds. Most of the world's population lives in northern Australian waters.

That the Okinawa dugong survives at all may be something of a miracle. It inhabits waters off one of the bloodiest pieces of real estate on earth.

More than 200,000 people - half of them Japanese soldiers and the remainder civilians - died on Okinawa in the spring of 1945, making the last major battle of World War II's Pacific campaign also the deadliest. More people may have died there than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki a few months later.

American military casualties included more than 40,000, including an estimated 12,000 killed, many as a result of a hurricane of kamikaze attacks. Japan in 1945 considered Okinawa - about 400 miles south of the country's main islands - the front line of its home defense. The horrific nature of the battle may have helped convince American war planners to drop the atom bombs rather than invade Japan with conventional forces.

Okinawa was returned to Japanese control in 1972 but the American military maintains dozens of bases there, including about three-quarters of the U.S. forces assigned to Japan.

Having survived the storm of fire and steel, the dugong nevertheless continue to be threatened by military operations on Okinawa, according to those interested in the animals' preservation.

Of particular concern are proposals to move the U.S. Marine Corps' Futenma air base from its current cramped location on one part of the island, where it is surrounded by civilian development, to an offshore site. The base, which supports helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, is home to more than 4,000 Marines and sailors.

The primary problem for environmentalists is that the new home of the airfield would be literally right on top of and next to a coral reef. The reef area provides "the most important remaining habitat" for the rare dugong, according to the lawsuit.

To block the Futenma project, a coalition of American and Japanese environmentalists turned to an unusual source of legal firepower, the National Historic Preservation Act. That law, unlike traditional environmental statutes, requires compliance by the U.S. government in its overseas activities, according to attorneys representing the groups.

The NHPA covers "any property listed on the host country's equivalent of the National Register of Historic Places," said Marcello Mollo, a lawyer for Oakland's nonprofit Earthjustice law firm.

The Okinawa dugong is a protected "national monument" under the Japanese "Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties," which is the equivalent of the historic register, according to the lawsuit, Okinawa Dugong v. Rumsfeld, 03-4350MHP.

The lawsuit seeks a court order setting aside plans to build the base until studies are conducted to find out how to avoid harming the animals.

And so the same law that might be used to preserve a Civil War battlefield in Virginia or a saloon in Oakland could be instrumental in saving the dugong. Mollo said it was necessary to turn to the historic preservation law because of the American military's general reluctance to abide by foreign countries' environmental statutes.

Attorneys for the government declined to comment about the case. However, at a hearing before U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel in March, Justice Department lawyer Charles Shockey said any actual development at the site is years away.
Okinawa Dugong

"There is no project anticipated any time soon," Shockey said, adding that building the new facility on or near the coral reef is only one of the proposals under consideration.

Documents from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs show that at least by 1996 the construction of a "sea-based facility" to handle the air base's helicopters had support from ranking U.S. and Japanese officials. The offshore strip was considered "the best option in terms of enhanced safety and quality of life for the Okinawan people while maintaining operational capabilities of U.S. forces," according to the report.

The lawsuit suggests plans for the new facility are far along, and Mollo told the judge they call for an 8,000-foot runway that could accommodate helicopters and airplanes.

Also in the works are designs for subsurface seismic testing that could disturb the animals, Mollo said.

More about the government's plans could be released next month, when the Department of Defense is scheduled to file a motion to dismiss the case. Patel scheduled a hearing for August to listen to arguments from both sides.

Until, then, presumably, the dugongs will go about their business, oblivious to the fact they may once again face a military assault from the United States, or that their fate may be in the hands of lawyers and judges thousands of miles away.

More Dugong News

Looking for Friendly Overseas Base, Pentagon Finds It Already Has One

By JAMES BROOKE
Published: April 7, 2004

Washed by a southwesterly Pacific breeze, a line of B-52 Stratofortress bombers stand parked on the hot tarmac here, their tails stenciled with ''MT,'' a reminder that they flew here recently from the snows of Minot, N.D.

Away for more than a decade, the B-52's, the United States' largest bombers, are back in Guam, part of a wide-ranging drive by the Pentagon to make this island, an American territory, a ''power projection hub'' on the edge of Asia.

''We are openly talking about putting a fighter wing there, a tanker squadron there, a Global Hawk group there,'' Gen. William J. Begert, Pacific Air Forces commander, said by telephone from Hawaii, almost 4,000 miles east of here. The Global Hawk is an unmanned surveillance plane.

''Guam, first of all, is U.S. territory,'' General Begert said. ''I don't need overflight rights. I don't need landing rights. I always have permission to go to Guam. It might as well be California or New Jersey.''

Next year, Washington is to decide on a new round of base closings, the first in a decade. Opening the debate, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld reported to Congress on March 23 that the military had 24 percent more base capacity than it needed.

Judging by Mr. Rumsfeld's comments after his trip here last November, Guam will be a winner in the base-closing process. This volcanic, 209-square-mile island, with a population of about 160,000, fits the Pentagon's new strategy of creating ''lily pads'' to allow for the rapid deployment of military muscle.

''Rumsfeld keeps saying, 'What about Guam? Let's build up Guam,' '' said an American diplomat in Tokyo, where the defense secretary stopped after visiting here.

The Navy loss its base at Subic Bay, the Philippines, in 1992 after the Philippine Senate refused to extend the lease, and American memories of that remain sharp. The diplomat added, ''We don't want to be somewhere where they don't want us, where they can throw us out.''

At the naval station here, Rear Adm. Arthur J. Johnson, the commander, said the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had raised Guam's strategic value as the Pentagon realized the usefulness of an all-American outpost in Asia. ''We invested huge amounts of money in facilities we could not use when we needed them, for example, Saudi Arabia,'' Admiral Johnson said. ''Places where the U.S. is autonomous have come greatly to the fore.''

Military officials here declined to discuss how Guam would fit into an American response to the rapid rise of China. But by moving ships and submarines to Guam, the Pentagon cuts ''the tyranny of distance,'' trimming five days off a Pacific crossing from Hawaii, said Richard Halloran, a military analyst based in Hawaii.

''A lot of these moves are intended to deter China,'' Mr. Halloran, a freelance military writer, said from Honolulu, where the United States Pacific Command is based. ''You are not threatening China, not in any way jeopardizing their security. On the other hand, if China becomes belligerent, you are in position to do something about it, particularly with the submarines and an aircraft carrier.''

Carl Peterson, a businessman on Guam, said of Washington's low-key military buildup here: ''It just sort of happens. Why disclose it? Why tell the Chinese what you are going to do before you do it?''

Later this year, a new nuclear-powered attack submarine is to arrive here, the third to make Guam its home port since 2002. While Washington debates whether a carrier should come here or to Hawaii, Guam's outer harbor is being dredged and World War II-era wharves are to be repaired for more efficient munitions handling.

[''Guam's geo-strategic importance cannot be overstated,'' Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, the senior military officer in the Pacific, with 300,000 soldiers, sailors and marines under his command, said on March 31 in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee. ''Both Navy and Air Force facilities will continue to figure prominently in Guam's increasing role as a power projection hub.'']

Across the naval station here, new housing is being built, part of a near- doubling of military spending on the island from levels of a decade ago.

''Guam is no longer the trailer park of the Pacific,'' Admiral Johnson said of the new military investment. ''Guam has emerged from backwater status to the center of the radar screen. This is rapidly becoming a focus for logistics, for strategic planning.''

Washington's investment in Guam is most easily seen from the catwalk of Andersen's 13-story air traffic control tower.

Down below, work is under way on an air-conditioned, typhoon-resistant hangar for B-1 bombers, a huge war reserve material warehouse, a new base exchange shopping center, a new fitness and health center and a new base security center. Out of sight, new underground pipes are delivering aviation fuel directly to parking pads for jets, and the first of 60 munitions storage ''igloos'' are being built. To foil terrorists, workers are drilling water wells on base and burying power lines off base.

''This is by far the largest amount of construction I have seen at any Air Force base in my years in the service,'' said Capt. David Vandenburg, a 29-year-old Oklahoman who is chief of base development.

Captain Vandenburg's commander, Col. Paul K. White, said that when he was assigned here a year ago he was leery of Guam because of its sleepy reputation. ''But this is a very exciting time to be here,'' he continued. ''If bases are closed, the units will have to go somewhere.''

Of the Pentagon's new appreciation for Guam, Mr. Peterson said: ''Rumsfeld is high on Guam; he was heard asking, 'How are we going to do Guam?' They are not showing their hand. But through innuendo and comments that we pick up on, everybody is suggesting there is going to be so much going on here.''

While apartments, fitness centers and military support offices are not glamorous, they are essential for increasing what Capt. David M. Boone, a Navy Seabee, calls Guam's ''surge capacity.'' In a military emergency, the island could quickly swell with planes, submarines, and ships.

''The real trick for me is to figure out how many people are going to be living here 10 years from now,'' said Captain Boone, who has command of military construction on Guam. ''It is a moving target.''

Guam has been a supply base since Spanish galleons from Manila stopped here to pick up fresh water and food before crossing the Pacific to Acapulco, Mexico. In the late 19th century, the island was a Spanish coaling station; the United States gained control in 1898 after the Spanish-American War. In recent decades, Air Force pilots dubbed Guam ''the world's largest gas station.''

But it is increasingly being used for military training. The Marines have rented typhoon-damaged structures for urban warfare exercises. Rural warfare training has been conducted in the southern jungles, forests so thick that one holdout Japanese soldier from World War II was captured only in 1972.

About 150 miles north of here, a small island serves as a bombing range. There is also the wide-open sea and the sky above it, with no one to complain about sonic booms.

''In Minot, the nearest bombing range is in Utah, a two-and-a-half hour flight,'' said Lt. Col. Robert Hyde, a 37-year-old Mississippian who commands the base's new unit of six B-52's. Referring to his training here with the Navy, Colonel Hyde said, ''In North Dakota, obviously, you can't work easily with a carrier battle group.''

During the Christmas 1972 bombing of North Vietnam, more than 150 B-52's flew from here. On a recent morning, bulldozers and pavers were upgrading the acres of tarmac that make Andersen comparable to a major international airport.

In this treeless landscape, even B-52's look small. In the shade of one the planes' huge, drooping wings, Master Sgt. Ralph Gillikan, a mechanic last stationed at the North Dakota base, surveyed the surrounding sea of concrete and said, ''The parking here is good.''

JSDF to have Missile Defence and two "aircraft carriers"

Undercurrent #18: March 9, 2004

JSDF to have Missile Defence and two "aircraft carriers"

Tomohiko Taniguchi (Editor at Large, Nikkei Business Publications, Inc.)

---

Little known thus far is that Japan is no longer debating whether it is right or wrong to equip itself with ballistic missile defence (BMD) capability. Indeed it is about to become an indispensable link of the US-led system.

With the passage through the Diet of the government-proposed budget for the fiscal year of 2004 beginning in April, the Japanese Self Defence Forces (JSDF) will be granted 106.8 billion yen (953 MUSD), specifically earmarked to procure what would eventually constitute a fully-fledged BMD system.

Japan and US "Block 04"

As an initial step the JSDF will procure such systems as follows in the fiscal year:

Sea-Based Midcourse (SMD) element of the BMD capability, with a Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) system at its centre, to be added to one aegis-type guided missile destroyer (DDG), costing 34 billion yen;

The ground-based Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missile-launch system that is part of the broader Terminal Defence Segment (TDS), 58.2 billion yen;

Upgrade of the Battle Management, Command, Control, and Communications (BMC3) network, plus continued collaboration with the US to develop relevant weapon systems, 14.6 billion yen.

The United States is taking what is called a spiral approach, in which components of the BMD system are developed and deployed in "blocks" with new capabilities fielded on a two-year cycle (starting in 2004). The first increment, called "Block 04", comprises exactly those systems deployments spelt out above.

Japan may be pursuing an independent plan of advancing its defence capability, but in so doing it is also implementing the Block 04 programme of the US per se. In a way, this could enhance the US-Japan security alliance even more than could the deployment of JSDF troops to Iraq, as a far fewer nations have taken real steps to be part of the US-led BMD system. Little wonder that US Ambassador Howard Baker praised Japan's decision in a speech he gave to Nanzan University on 1 March.

Earlier, on 19 December last year, it was announced that the Japanese government had decided "on the introduction of a Ballistic Missile Defence System and other measures" at the Cabinet Council and at the Security Council, a subsidiary council of the former. Nothing has been hidden. And yet throughout the Diet sessions that examined the budget proposed by the government, no opposition was ever voiced as to Japan's introducing a BMD system, thereby carrying out the first increment of the long-running programme of the United States.

Is this not strange? For one thing, China has long made it known that it would never tolerate Japan having BMD capability. One Chinese scholar has gone on to say that once Japan had it, "we should fight against it in exactly the same manner we did against the Japanese invaders during the war". Whether or not this is true, it is plausible that the "cold peace" already prevailing between Beijing and Tokyo will become even colder. Still an otherwise Beijing-friendly group of legislators in both ruling and opposition parties appeared quite uninterested in the issue.

The fact that Japan's BMD programme will be part of the US Block 04 has also been made public knowledge. One can learn about it by reading books such as that by Hideaki Kaneda⁽¹⁾.

The largest destroyer ship

The fiscal 2004 defence budget will also give the JSDF (the Japanese Maritime Defence Force, to be more precise) the largest destroyer Japan has ever had since the disappearance of its Imperial Navy.

Projected to be built this year is a 13,500-ton helicopter destroyer (DDH) code-named 16DDH (16 as in the Heisei year), with another planned from next year. The 16DDH in JSDF classification is by no means an aircraft carrier. Its characteristic shape, however, is nothing but.

It is almost as large as the Japanese Imperial Navy's Tone class heavy cruisers. It also matches in size such active aircraft carriers as Italy's MM Giuseppe Garibaldi (10,100 tons) and Spain's Principe de Asturia (17,188 tons).

Its modern aegis capacity with phased array radars, plus its advanced information link connecting both the Cabinet situation room and other weapon systems, also give it what the JSDF thinks will be the crucial node for the BMC3 network. This could be the flagship for the entire JMDF fleet.

JSDF maintains it carries only four helicopters, but in practice, it can carry as many as ten. Not only that, it is not entirely impossible for it to be refurbished to carry Vertical, Short Take-off and Landing (V/STOL) aircraft such as the UK's Harrier⁽²⁾. It is little wonder the rest of Asia casts a suspicious eye toward the project.

Few Diet legislators have shown interest in discussing either one of these defence programmes, not to mention the ordinary Japanese citizens. Given the JSDF is clearly conducting a historic metamorphosis, it must become all the more accountable first to the nation and also to its allies and neighbours.

⁽¹⁾ Hideaki Kaneda, Dan'do Misairu Bouei Newmon (Introduction on BMD), Tokyo, Kaya Shobo, 2003

⁽²⁾ See Sekai no Kan'sen (Ships of the World), January, 2004, pp. 136-141

Constitutional Revision: No Longer If, But When

Debate: Commentary (February 10, 2004)

Ayako DOI (Editor, Japan Digest)

When former Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro ran in the first Lower House election held under the postwar Constitution in 1947, he drove around his Gunma district on a bicycle with a flag stuck up from his back just like a samurai going into battle. The slogan on the flag called for jishu kempo, or rejection of the constitution that had been handed down by the U.S. Occupation a few months earlier. But during a political career that spanned more than five decades, his idea -- the reason he sought office -- never came up in the Diet for discussion, much less for a vote. For half a century, it was an outlandish dream, tucked deep inside the heads of conservative politicians who remembered the days when Japan was a power with which to be reckoned.

Given that history, it is ironic that now, after Nakasone has been forcibly retired by Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro (who is a strong advocate of constitutional revision), the issue is high on the agenda of every major party -- even the pacifist Komeito and Social Democrats. The way things are going, it's likely that 2004 will be the year Japan takes its first real steps down that road.

LDP Diet Affairs Committee Chairman Nakagawa Hidenao opened the gate by promising in his New Year press conference that he would send legislation to the Diet by spring to set up a process to rewrite the constitution. Democratic Party President Kan Naoto followed up by declaring that he would start a discussion on the subject in his party so it could produce its own draft revisions by 2006. Welcoming Kan to his playing field, Koizumi said he looks forward to working with the DPJ to make the revision a reality. "I never thought the DPJ would be so proactive," he exulted.

Koizumi's public overture to the largest opposition party made his coalition partner, Komeito, feel like a wife watching her husband as he was lured away by a mistress. Komeito security expert Akamatsu Masao nagged Koizumi about it in the Diet earlier this month, saying "The prime minister talks about common beliefs between LDP and DPJ... How can you not even mention your coalition partner?" A few days later, the pacifist party dropped its reservations about fiddling with the constitution, and announced it will publish an "opinion" on the subject this fall. "There will be no taboos, including the issue of Article 9," Komeito President Kanzaki Takenori told reporters. Calling Komeito's shift "historic," former Foreign Minister Nakayama Taro, who heads a Lower House panel on the constitution, remarked, "Honestly I never thought this day would come."

The constitution requires approval of two third of each house of the Diet before a revision can be presented to voters, who must give it majority approval in a national referendum. Among them, LDP, DPJ, and Komeito hold 95 percent of the seats in the Lower House, and 200 of the 247 in the upper chamber -- so changing the 1947 basic law handed down by the U.S. Occupation is no longer impossible, if they can agree on what it should say.

Lest it fade into irrelevancy, even the Social Democratic Party, whose raison d'etre has been goken, or protection of the constitution, decided just last week to create a "study group" on the subject. Former President Doi Takako, regarded as the goddess of goken, reluctantly told her colleagues, "We aren't aiming for a revision... but we must study to be able to contribute to the discussions" in the Nakayama panel.

Behind the rush to get on the kaiken (constitutikaikenonal revision) bandwagon is a clear shift in public opinion over the last year or so. Recent polls indicate that a majority of Japanese now support revising the constitution one way or another. That was confirmed in spades when the voters defeated SDP and Communist candidates wholesale in last November's Lower House ballot. Both parties had adamantly opposed changing a single word in the constitution. SDP President Fukushima Mizuho lamented that young voters these days don't even understand the word goken.

Accelerating the shift is the ongoing Diet debate about whether the government is violating the constitution by sending Self Defense Forces troops to Iraq. A lot of Japanese think Koizumi is walking out to the edge of the law when he says the deployment is justified by the mutual security treaty with the U.S. and the preamble to the constitution, which calls for international cooperation. On both sides of the controversy over Iraq, there is a strong sense that Japan has come to the limit of expanding its military roles overseas by simply re-interpreting the constitution each time a conflict arises that requires deployment of its troops. Those who worry about escalating military activism would spell out clearly what the forces can and cannot do, and supporters would rather rewrite the! constitution so it says openly that Japan may maintain a military to defend itself. "The time will come, when we should call our (self defense) forces a military, and give it the honor and place it deserves in the constitution," Koizumi told the Diet.

To be sure, agreeing to revise the constitution is one thing, while agreeing on how to change it is quite another. Komeito and the SDP would keep, or even strengthen, the Article 9 renunciation of military power in resolving international conflicts, and insert guarantees for new kinds of civil liberties such as protection of privacy and the right to live in clean environment. There are still many who would obstinately resist fiddling with Article 9 even in the LDP and the DPJ. But from the way public opinion shifted dramatically in support of the SDF deployment in Iraq once the troops were on the ground, a fait accompli clearly works in favor of advocates for change.

In a recently published analysis on the role of diplomacy in the 1930s, former Foreign Ministry official Ogura Kazuo concluded that antiwar politicians and bureaucrats failed to put a brake on Japan's slide into World War II because they tried to influence the policy of the militarists from within, rather than denouncing it outright at the risk of being cast aside. It seems that Komeito and SDP are about to make the same mistake in the current debate on the constitution. In a society where conformity and harmony are so important as they are in Japan, it's hard to restrain a shift once it starts to happen. As he left the Diet reluctantly last fall, Nakasone said it was particularly painful to be left out at a time when his lifelong dream was about to come true.

(Posted here with the permission of Pacific Forum CSIS)