Of all the people…
Saturday, September 30th, 2006…to ANALYZE the rise of Shinzo Abe, Japan’s new prime minister, the New York Times in its sagacity selects Yoshihisa Komori, Washington correspondent for the Sankei Shimbun, Tokyo’s equivalent of the National Review, who helpfully informs us that the new man will be America’s “trustworthy friend” in the Pacific.
As if THAT was the issue…
The story is available here
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Laughably, Komori argues that “without forgetting the lessons of history,” Abe and the new government will move to revise the Constitution and revamp military spending. This in a country where even most college-age students don’t know about Japan’s Colonial Occupation of Korea, the realities of the Nanjing Massacre, or the history which preceded the A -bomb being dropped on Hiroshima…because these lessons aren’t taught. And those who DO want textbooks to accurately reflect history are regularly shouted down by the same sort of hysterical nationalists who want Abe to abandon the war-renouncing clauses of the Constititution.
Komori also labels his nation, which has enjoyed one party rule for more than 50 years a “solid democracy.” Next he’ll tell us how “free and open” the Japanese economy is.
Nevertheless, Komori is absolutely RIGHT to say that Japan has gone “too far” in eviscerating its sense of national pride and patriotism. But he’s WRONG to suggest that the way to obtain that pride is both to remilitarize AND to remain under the smothering embrace of the Bush administration.
Modernizing national thinking, coming up with a coherent strategy to deal with the 21st century issues like globalization and the rise of China while coping with what appears to be secular and permanent decline of Japan itself — those are the real issues Shinzo Abe must deal with. Yet such a difficult process can ONLY proceed when the Japanese actually sit down and try to determine for themselves in a strategic manner, what their “self hood” and “self interest” are really about in the 21st century. Blindly following the suffocating embrace of Washington will not help the cause, and it is hard to see how sending Japanese troops to Iraq, for instance, actually furthers any Japanese foreign policy objectives — unless the sum of those goals is to keep Don Rumsfeld and Condi Rice happy.
Wrapping yourself in the flag won’t make it any easier to rise to that challenge.