By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Nov 16 2010 (IPS)

Thorny territorial disputes with neighbours China and Russia appear to nudging Japan’s pacifist public toward accepting what has so far been an unpalatable prospect: a more assertive and militarily strong country.

Almost 80 percent of those polled in a survey released on Nov. 8 by Japan’s NHK public television showed growing frustration with their socialist-leaning Prime Minister Naoto Kan over his handling of tensions over territorial rows. Many pointed to his “weak” diplomacy as the second most important reason, after the stagnating economy, for their disappointment in him.

“Japan’s hands are tied when it comes to rapping China and Russia over the territorial disputes,” Hisashi Manabu, a 62-year-old company employee said, referring to the post-war Constitution that prohibits Japan from rebuilding its military after its World War II defeat. “The stark reality is that we must be responsible for our own protection.”

The current round of tensions with China stems from Japan’s detention of a Chinese captain on Sep. 7 after he rammed his fishing boat against a Japanese Naval Coast Guard ship. It had ordered him off the Senkaku islands, which China calls the ‘Diaoyutai’. The skipper was later released after strong protests by Beijing, which also claims ownership of the islands.

In many ways, China’s growing influence in Asia, not to mention its becoming the world’s second biggest economy this year, has led to a new awareness in Japan of its own vulnerability, analysts say.

This is despite the security umbrella provided by the 1965 Japan-U.S. Security Pact, which obliges the United States to come to Japan’s defence in case of military attack.

“Nationalism is getting stronger on both sides. The territorial clash with China has revealed how little Tokyo is prepared to deal with the crisis both in military and diplomatic terms,” explained Prof Takashi Inoguchi, international relations expert at Niigata prefectural university.

For now, more time is needed to let the testy ties between China and Japan, whose historical relationship is already marred by Japan’s colonisation of parts of China decades ago, calm down. Indeed, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengaku told the press that Japan-China ties are important but “need time” to be repaired, as both countries have to be sensitive to their domestic constituencies.

For example, thousands of Japanese shouted anti-Chinese slogans against Chinese President Hu Jintao when he was in Yokohama for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit on Nov. 13. During the past month, Chinese groups have also held anti-Japan demonstrations in several cities in China.

Japanese diplomacy has also been facing a severe test on the Russian front after President Dmitry Medvedev ignored a warning from the Japanese government, and on Nov. 1 visited Kunashiri island, which is among the four islands that two countries claim. Japan calls them the Northern Territories and Russia, the Southern Kurils.

Medvedev declared on Kunashiri that the island, which is under Russian administration, belongs to Russia, touching a sensitive chord among Japanese who point angrily to the then Soviet Union’s invasion of the islands four days after Japan’s surrender on Aug. 15, 1945. Medvedev was the first Russian president to visit the island, and this row has prevented Japan and Russia from signing a formal peace treaty after World War II.

These open challenges that China and Russia threw at Japan have pushed Tokyo to step up moves to court the United States, an approach that is quite a departure from earlier pronouncements by Kan’s socialist-leaning government. When it took office in June 2010, it promised to align Japan closer with its Asian neighbours.

Likewise, Japan’s leading daily, the ‘Yomiuri’, reported that the Defence Ministry plans to beef up the country’s military, called the Self Defence Forces, by sending a new unit to the Yonekuni island, which lies in close proximity to the Senkaku islands.

The unit will monitor via radar the movements of Chinese warships that have increasingly been active in the East China Sea, defence ministry officials say.

Japan has also been busy investing in its security by cultivating ties with neighbours ranging from South Korea to India, another China rival.

Tokyo has started negotiations with Seoul on mutual exchanges of classified military information – an unprecedented initiative that defies the countries’ troubled past, which has roots in Japan’s colonisation of the Korean peninsula. Sharing military information, however, is a common interest to keep watch over Stalinist North Korea’s nuclear programme.

On Oct. 25, Japan and India signed an Economic Partnership Agreement that aims to foster enhanced economic relations within the next 10 years. A “timely and strategic move to contain China’s maritime expansion in the East China Sea” was how the ‘Yomiuri’ newspaper called this development.

“The new thrust by Japan takes place against a historic shift in power in East Asia with the rise of China’s influence,” said Prof Yuichi Hosoya, who specialises in international politics at Keio University.

But he expresses the hope that these diplomatic maneuverings, which will continue as Asia reacts to China’s clout, would lead to a more balanced power configuration, and not more instability, in the region. Said Hoyosa: “A stronger Japan supporting the United States must become not a threat to Beijing, but rather produce a balance of power in Asia that will be welcomed by all.”

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