JAPAN: On Anniversary of Surrender, New Conservatism Rears Head

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Aug 14 2003 (IPS) - While television cameras follow the Emperor and key politicians on Friday to mark the 58th anniversary of Japan’s surrender to Allied Forces in World War II, 74-year-old Susumu Abe will spend the day talking about the horrors of war to young people.

”That fateful day has taken on a special meaning in Japan today,” says Abe, a former teacher who was 16 when the U.S. military bombed his neighbourhood in 1945, causing his home to go up in flames and forcing him to flee to safety with his mother and two sisters.

”My mission to tell young people that the horror of war is the only way we can stop Japan’s new thrust towards rearmament,” explains Abe, who hails from Yokohama city south of the Japanese capital.

Abe, along with some 30 other survivors of the Yokohoma bombing raid, plan to attend a civic memorial where they will discuss the physical and psychological torment they went through as a result of their country making, what they describe, a ”huge mistake” in going to war against its East Asian neighbours.

”We were hungry all the time. I saw my friends burnt and crushed bodies all around me and missed my father terribly when he went to work for the military. Japan must never go to war again,” insists Abe. Abe says his elder brother, who was 17 at the time and was in the navy, also suffered immensely as a result of his wartime experience.

”When my brother returned home after the war, he was consumed with guilt because he has been educated to believe that he must die for the Emperor and his country,” explains Abe.

Abe’s war experience has made him, like many of his generation, deeply pacifist.

Indeed, civilians in their seventies and eighties comprise the backbone of Japan’s non-violent movement – and this spirit is enshrined in the ‘Peace Constitution’ imposed by the U.S. government that occupied the country for six years after Japan’s surrender in 1945.

But the public mood has been showing signs of change, especially since most of the younger Japanese know of the country’s military aggression only from textbooks and nationalist stirrings are stoked by today’s social and political problems.

Analysts say the pacifist attitude appears to be facing an uphill battle because Japan’s growing economic and social morass has led to widespread longing for the revival of the country’s former glory in a bid to boost national self-confidence.

”Japan is heading toward nationalism against domestic problems and the looming North Korean threat,” says Harumi Arima, a well-known political analyst. ”With the majority of the population under 60 years who have not experienced the past war, there is little to stem the tide.”

Abe agrees: ”We are termed old fools and accused of ignoring reality. The situation is reminiscent of the past when Japan was drawn into the war by militarists who won public support by putting forward the threat of a foreign attacks.”

There may be no foreign invasions coming, but there are certainly growing insecurities in Japan today.

Because of its economic recession, recorded growth rates have been less than 1 percent for almost a decade. This has boosted the strength of conservatives who say they want the country back on its feet again.

At the forefront of the new trend are top politicians who have raised the spectre of a fading Japan against the looming economic power of China.

For example, Shintaro Ishihara, a popular and ambitious Tokyo governor, has long called for Japan, the world’s second largest economy, to be given its ”due international position” as an equal partner with the United States.

Now on his second term, Ishihara has won approval for his platform demanding the pullout of the U.S. Air Force base in Yokota, close to Tokyo.

His hostile comments on China, while upsetting Beijing, has been accepted by others here as being practical. On Jul. 17, he said that ”Japanese aid to China must be used to return Chinese criminals back home.”

Yet another sign of this new conservatism is a controversial bill passed on Jul. 27 boosting the strength of Japan’s Self Defence Forces (SDF) by paving the way for their dispatch to work alongside U.S. troops in Iraq.

The bill was pushed by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and hardliners who described the legislative victory as a ”new page in Japanese history”.

The next step that the new conservatives want is a revision of Japan’s Peace Constitution, under which the country renounced the use of war.

For many among the Japanese public, the revised SDF bill was already a bitter pill to swallow and an affirmation of this rising conservatism.

In truth, political writer Koichi Ishiyama says, the revelations of abductions of Japanese nationals by North Korea and a confession by Pyongyang in May, where it confirmed its nuclear weapons programme, weigh far more heavily than calls for peace in terms of shaping public opinion.

Ishiyama points out even the opposition, the Social Democrats, supported the new SDF bill, an illustration of how deeply the Japanese have taken the threat to national security.

All this causes Abe to shudder. ”There is no public debate and issues that were once considered radical is becoming acceptable in the new domestic situation. We must not lose heart,” he muses.