{"id":7041,"date":"2010-08-30T00:00:43","date_gmt":"2010-08-29T22:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=7041"},"modified":"2010-09-05T14:54:47","modified_gmt":"2010-09-05T12:54:47","slug":"japan-right-now-what-happens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2010\/08\/japan-right-now-what-happens\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan Right Now: What Happens?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kyoto<\/em>:\u00a0 Hot like a sauna all over, with no cool water, only lukewarm.\u00a0 No heated political debate, only lukewarm.\u00a0 Like Ozawa of the governing Democratic Party of Japan, the DPJ, saying that Americans are “simple-minded”.\u00a0 Full stop.\u00a0 True, but how about his offering complex thought and speech?\u00a0 What we get in Japan is mainly the loneliness and meaninglessness Murakami describes so well – and contributes to by normalizing it<\/em>.\u00a0 There is an enormous unease about what happens in the world, in Japan, and to Japan.\u00a0 But it is by and large unarticulated in personal conversations, and in the media.\u00a0 An adequate column with this title might actually be three empty pages.<\/p>\n

There are reasons for deep concern.\u00a0 Of the countries in the grip of the US alliances Japan may have become the most American.\u00a0 Beaten in its deep cultural foundations, not only militarily, Japan is like a monotheistic country with God residing 7\/24 in Washington.\u00a0 Being so different, americanization was not a dialect, a variation on one’s own idiom, like in Germany and Norway, but a new language.\u00a0 They master it imperfectly but make great strides forward, and will not easily turn in some other direction.<\/p>\n

But the US imperial grip is crumbling, and that message will also arrive in Japan, a little late, but fairly soon.<\/p>\n

That other direction is an East Asian Community, EAC, of two Chinas, two Koreas, and three Japans.\u00a0 Three?\u00a0 Yes, mainland Japan, the Northern Territories+ that belong neither to Japan nor to Russia but to the Ainu, and should be handed back, the Ryu Kyu islands, also known as Okinawa, that could be handed back to the inhabitants; both as highly autonomous parts of Japan.\u00a0\u00a0 A more adequate Japan might actually be a Federal Republic, and today’s Okinawa could host the headquarter of that future community of three giants, with their problematic subdivisions.\u00a0 By 2020 US bases out, EAC headquarters in.<\/p>\n

But Japan is not yet ready.\u00a0 The past speaks with a loud voice, reconciliation with the Chinas and Koreas they brutalized is still not on the political agenda, nor concrete plans for a community.<\/p>\n

The former prime minister from the DPJ, Hatoyama, had written about a regional currency union and political integration in an East Asian Community, and may have been exposed to hard US arms twisting, not bought, but threatened.\u00a0 The bureaucrats were also against him.\u00a0 He resigned.\u00a0 His story, if ever published, will be a sad one.<\/p>\n

Of lost opportunity.\u00a0 A community of neighbors, with good relations to a non-imperial USA, is a better scenario than falling between one rising chair and one crumbling chair.\u00a0 Political talent is needed, with strong leadership from the top, from the parliament, and from bureaucrats learning the basics of democracy: non-elected officials are servants, not rulers.\u00a0 The European Union is also slow in building a community less subservient to the USA, but Afghanistan may speed it up.\u00a0 Nor do Eurocrats understand “serving, not ruling”.<\/p>\n

The past does not disappear.\u00a0 This year was the centenary of the Japanese brutal 1910-45 annexation of Korea, based on the 1905 agreement with the USA, the Philippines for USA, Korea for Japan.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Professor Kinhide Mushakoji made a plea for including colonialism as a crime against humanity–a theme excluded from the Tokyo tribunal as it obviously would boomerang on the Western victors.\u00a0 But it is rather unlikely that Japan will raise that issue for fear of being revisited by its past (Ryu Kyu-Taiwan-Korea-Manchuria-major parts of East Asia), and for fear of offending its Western allies.<\/p>\n

Very active is the new right wing, the Zaitokukai<\/em>.\u00a0 Efforts to protect foreigners like Chinese and Koreans from exploitation are attacked as “privileging foreigners” by people hit by the capitalist low-paying part-time and contract work wave.\u00a0 But we live in a partly globalizing world, and Kantian hospitality will have to apply.<\/p>\n

And Japan seems to have gone along with the idea that a North Korean torpedo sank the South Korean navy ship.\u00a0 However, the theory that the ship simply went on a reef-rock due to a navigation error gains in credibility.\u00a0 A shame to be covered up and be used, also to win elections?\u00a0 As is well known the UN did not buy the issue.<\/p>\n

But if the government of Japan fails to stand up with a project for the future and fails to prevent Japan from sinking into oblivion overshadowed by China, maybe nongovernments, the Japanese civil society, can step in?\u00a0 Take the brilliant NGO Peace Boat, circling the planet, visiting places of violent conflict, making thousands know world reality first hand.\u00a0 They could sail a future East Asian Community Japan-Ainu-Korea North and South-China and Taiwan-Okinawa-Japan.\u00a0 With participants from all seven, making the concept of an EAC, propagating it, living it, navigating it, with no reefs-rocks.<\/p>\n

With Korean and Chinese NGOs they could advance reconciliation by writing decent textbooks on history and through an alternative to the Yasukuni shrine honoring Japanese in uniform killed during the Pacific war.\u00a0 Honoring all who were killed, including Americans, military and civilian, making their deaths meaningful by adding to the shrine as a memorial to the past but a center for EAC future development, in japan and in the other countries.\u00a0 A Japanese Prime Minister visiting the present Yasukuni shrine is an insult to the countries attacked; to plan a joint future with the equals is not.<\/p>\n

The anti-nuclear movement focus on Hiroshima and hibakusha<\/em> could tie up with the Agent Orange victims and the many like-minded NGOs in the USA to help the victims of US atrocities (Christianity at work?), and to proclaim a forceful Never More.\u00a0 For the first time a US ambassador was present on 6 August–next time Obama please, earning the Nobel Peace Prize with an apology.\u00a0 With the NGOs, bottom up, prompting the governments into action to join the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are reasons for deep concern. Of the countries in the grip of the US alliances Japan may have become the most American. Beaten in its deep cultural foundations, not only militarily, Japan is like a monotheistic country with God residing 7\/24 in Washington. Being so different, americanization was not a dialect, a variation on one’s own idiom, like in Germany and Norway, but a new language.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7041\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}