The Hindu : Opinion / News Analysis : Yasukuni and Japan's world view

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Friday, Aug 18, 2006

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Opinion - News Analysis

Yasukuni and Japan's world view

P.S. Suryanarayana

With the alarm bells being sounded in the region, Junichiro Koizumi will need to convince neighbouring states that the new brand-Japan is not minted in the old imperial yard.

HAS JAPAN squandered, in a few precious minutes on August 15, its decades-long diplomatic advantage of being a post-imperial pacifist power? The answer will range from an emphatic "yes" to an equally affirmative "maybe," if the respondent-states are Japan's neighbours across East Asia. And, the answer should vary from a categorical "no" to a realistic advocacy of "damage control," if the respondents are Japanese nationals.

For just a quarter of an hour on the 61st anniversary of the end of Second World War, Japan's charismatic Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi paid homage to his country's martyrs of many wars, soldiers and civilians, at the Yasukuni shrine in central Tokyo. It was indeed Mr. Koizumi's sixth visit to the shrine after he became Prime Minister over five years ago. Yet the groundswell of political anger and people's anguish across the region — not only China and South Korea but also Southeast Asia — was unprecedented and spontaneous in scale.

And this reality, if not suitably managed by Japan and its neighbours, can even lead to a redefining, if not an abandoning, of the ongoing political process of building an East Asia community over time.

For some of Japan's neighbours, it was as if Mr. Koizumi had suddenly turned a pacifist state into a nuclear-armed power. Surely, though, nothing as "militaristic" as that has happened now, and Japan hopes to ride out the storm.

Emotional issue

Why, then, should Yasukuni evoke powerful emotions in East Asia? The reason, rooted in recent history, is that China and the two Koreas, among others, suffered under Japan's imperial ways that ended only with its defeat in the Second World War. So, the "glorification" of Japan's imperial past is seen by these countries as Tokyo's renewal of a "militarist agenda."

The shrine "deifies," in the Shinto tradition, over 2.5 million people, mostly Japanese but also a few thousand "captive" foreigners such as the colonial-era Koreans and Taiwan-residents. All of them are reckoned to have laid down their lives for Japan during its bygone wars and hostilities against China and others including the United States, currently Tokyo's only military ally.

For Tokyo's neighbours, though, unacceptable indeed is Yasukuni's conferment of honourable martyrdom on 14 Japanese military and political "leaders" who were convicted as Class-A war criminals by a U.S.-led tribunal for their part in the Second World War. The names of these 14, including Japan's disgraced Prime Minister who led it to its surrender in 1945, were enshrined by Yasukuni in its honours list much later — in 1978, and that too secretly at that time.

There have been, very recently, "disclosures" in Japan itself that these 14 war criminals were made heroes against the wishes of the then Japanese Emperor, Hirohito. But Mr. Koizumi overlooked this new aspect of domestic political discourse before making his decisive Yasukuni visit at this time. For him, it was not a question of praying for the war criminals. He reaffirmed Japan's resolve to refrain from waging wars in the future.

Often, in recent years, several Japanese leaders, including Mr. Koizumi himself, apologised to the international community for Tokyo's wartime atrocities. So, he saw nothing amiss about his Yasukuni tryst, for the first time, on the very day that China and others would mark as a cherished anniversary of their liberation from imperial Japan. He said the furore from these countries, even when he avoided the World War anniversary for his earlier Yasukuni pilgrimages, had now convinced him that August 15 was an "appropriate day."

Looming large beyond Mr. Koizumi's Yasukuni logic are East Asia's evolving political ethos, on one side, and Japan's futurist world-view, on the other. Now, the ethos of amity and cooperation define the current process towards an East Asia community. And, the process was decided upon after much debate among the regional powers including China and Japan.

Significantly now, South Korea and some Southeast Asian states have warned that the latest Yasukuni episode has already "disturbed ... regional cooperation and friendship."

Tokyo's new world-view is also inevitably linked to this process in East Asia, because of globalisation and Japan's geopolitical needs. And, Japan wants to re-emerge as a global power with no imperial-era baggage. As Japan-experts Christopher W. Hughes and Akiko Fukushima have analysed in a different but relevant context, the country's "bilateralism," shorthand for Tokyo's post-imperial dependence on Washington, and "multilateralism," or the evolving East Asian ethos, "make uncomfortable ... bedfellows."

It is in this situation that Mr. Koizumi is presenting a resurgent nationalism, evident in the Yasukuni episode, as a policy that could help Japan navigate its passage to a global-power status. However, with the alarm bells being sounded in East Asia, he will need to convince the region that the new brand-Japan is not minted in the old imperial yard.

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