Abe's Canberra Strategy, will it work in Washington?

Abe at Australian War Memorial 2014

APP member Peter Ennis interviews for his Dispatch Japan APP member Professor Tessa Morris-Suzuki on Abe's forthcoming trip to the United States. It is likely that the prime minister will try to present himself to the world as being a compassionate and caring person, but at the same time avoid any notion of historical responsibility. Morris-Suzuki says

I am concerned that Abe and his advisors may be planning to use verbal games to send one message to the English speaking world and another to East Asian countries, including Japan itself. The terrible events of the Pacific War should be recalled with sincerity, honesty and directness, not with word games.

Abe’s ‘Canberra Strategy’

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan will speak to a joint meeting of the US Congress on April 29, marking the first time Japan’s top political leader will address the full US national legislature. The speech will carry enormous symbolism; Abe will speak from the rostrum of the House of Representatives, from which Franklin Roosevelt declared war on Japan in 1941 in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor in December of that year. The US and Japan have long been reconciled, of course, with a post-war bilateral security alliance that continues to form the bedrock of stability in East Asia. But Abe has a testy relationship with his leadership counterparts in China and South Korea, and both countries will be listening carefully to hear if and how he addresses lingering animosities about Japan’s historical role in the region.

Many analysts in Washington expect (and some have recommended) that Abe will model his upcoming address to Congress on the talk he delivered to the Australian parliament in capital-city Canberra in July of last year. Abe effectively referenced two incidents of severe mistreatment of Australian prisoners-of-war during World War II that had long been thorns-in-the-side of Japan-Australia relations. The Bataan ‘Death March’ of 1942, in which hundreds of American POWs died in Japan-occupied Philippines, conjures up similar emotions in the United States. In 2009, Japan officially apologized for that mistreatment of captured American soldiers. Japan’s prime minister at that time, Taro Aso, was under some pressure in part because his family’s lucrative coal mining business used US POWs as forced-laborers during World War II. (Aso is now Japan’s finance minister.)

Whether Abe really apologized to Australians on behalf of Japan, or merely commiserated about a shared bitter experience, remains a matter of contention. And his Canberra comments made no reference to China, Korea, or any other country in East Asia, leaving unanswered whether he really agrees with his predecessors Tomiichi Murayama and Junichiro Koizumi, who stated unambiguously in 1995 and 2005 respectively that Japan adopted a “mistaken national policy” that resulted in “aggression” and “colonial rule” in the first half of last century.

While stating that he agrees with his predecessors “on the whole,” Abe himself has never used the most important operative words from those past apologies that Chinese and Korean officials consider a litmus test of his views and intentions.

Unresolved history issues between Japan and Korea – key US allies – continue to complicate American diplomacy in East Asia, making Prime Minister Abe’s upcoming address to Congress, and his planned statement in August marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, particularly important.

To discuss Abe’s ‘Canberra Strategy,’ we turned to Tessa Morris-Suzuki, one of Australia’s top specialists on Japan. Morris-Suzuki is professor of Japanese history at Australian National University, and author of East Asia Beyond the History Wars. She is past president of the Asian Studies Association of Australia.

Morris-Suzuki: ‘Prime Minister Abe is deliberately ambiguous about apologies’

DISPATCH JAPAN: Was Prime Minister Abe’s “Canberra” speech last year well-received in Australia?
MORRIS-SUZUKI: The prime minister’s speech made headline news and attracted some media debate at the time, but its long- term impact on Australian views of Japan appears to have been quite small. It is difficult to say whether this impact was positive or negative. A number of media, business, and political commentators praised Abe’s words of condolence for the Australian servicemen killed in World War II, but much of the discussion in letters-to-the-editor of major newspapers was critical. The event also attracted public criticism from Australia’s main veterans’ organization, the Returned and Services League. An interesting note is that much of the criticism focused on Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who replied by praising the skill and sense of honor shown by Japanese troops during the war. This was widely criticized by veterans and others, who argued that Japan’s wartime treatment of prisoners of war was not honorable.

DISPATCH JAPAN: Abe referred specifically to the Sandakan wartime events on Borneo, and the Kokoda events in Papua New Guinea. Remind readers why Sandakan and Kokoda resonate with Australians.
MORRIS-SUZUKI: Abe began his speech by referring to Sandakan and Kokoda. Sandakan in Borneo is the site of a death march during which some 1,000 Australian soldiers were killed or died of starvation, disease, and exhaustion. The Kokoda track over the mountains of Papua New Guinea was the site of crucial and fierce battles between Australian and Japanese forces, in which some 600 Australian soldiers were killed. 

It is worth noting that although Abe mentioned the place name Sandakan, he did not use the term “death march”. These two sites, and particularly Kokoda, have become key symbols of the sufferings of Australian soldiers during the Pacific War. Monuments to the Kokoda track exist in many parts of Australia, and some Australians still visit the track to reenact the march over its rugged terrain.

DISPATCH JAPAN: Did Australians receive Abe’s comments as an apology? He seemed to speak somewhat in the passive tense – “regretting” that terrible things happened, but not acknowledging responsibility on the part of Japan.
MORRIS-SUZUKI: Most commentators noted that Abe expressed condolences but not apology. In fact, Abe’s speech presented the war, not as an event for which Japan should apologize, but rather as a part of history which Australia and Japan share. He spoke of “our fathers and grandfathers” -- both Japanese and Australian -- experiencing the events of Sandakan and Kokoda, and went on to speak of the Japanese naval officers killed in an attempted midget submarine attack on Sydney harbor. He recalled how Australia had invited the mother of one of the dead to visit Sydney for a memorial ceremony, and then quoted the words of former Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies: “Hostility to Japan must go. It is better to hope than always to remember.” The clear message was, “We all suffered similarly during the war. We should let bygones be bygones.”

DISPATCH JAPAN: Abe seemed perhaps more ready to reconcile with Australia than with China or Korea?
MORRIS-SUZUKI: I look at this in strategic terms. Abe wishes as far as possible to avoid making any direct apologies or acknowledgments of wrongs committed by the Japanese military during the war. But at the same time his strategy is to deepen the military alliance with the United States and forge new and deep military and intelligence alliances with countries like Australia. In order to combine these two aims, he and his advisers choose words very carefully to try to smooth over concerns about memories of the war without directly addressing or apologizing for the events of the past.

DISPATCH JAPAN: Abe says he upholds the Murayama and Kono statements “as a whole.” To you, what does that mean?
MORRIS-SUZUKI: This is a phrase devised to confuse and blur the meaning of Abe’s stance on the issues of war responsibility and apology. It is a deliberately ambiguous phrase which enables him to avoid saying whether he accepts words such as “aggression” and “apology” contained in the Murayama statement, and to avoid reconfirming the Kono statement’s acknowledgment that “comfort women” were recruited by coercion.

DISPATCH JAPAN: What do you anticipate the prime minister will say in his August 15 statement, marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II in the Pacific?
MORRIS-SUZUKI: I think it likely that he will use two verbal strategies in an effort to appease international (particularly US) opinion, while at the same time avoiding making a direct statement of apology about the war. First, he will express a personal sense of pain at the memory of the war. In many recent statements, including his Canberra speech, Abe has spoken of his sadness and heartache at this memory. These words present the prime minister to the world as being a compassionate and caring person, but at the same time avoid any notion of historical responsibility. The second strategy is to use the word “反省” [hansei - best translated as “reconsideration” or “self-questioning”] in his statement in Japanese, but to translate this into English as “remorse”. The word “remorse” in English has a much stronger meaning than “反省” in Japanese (and would most commonly be rendered in Japanese as 後悔 [kōkai] or 自責の念 [jiseki no nen]). In the Murayama and Koizumi statements, the word “反省” was also translated into English as “remorse”, but was followed by the words お詫びの気持ち[owabi no kimochi - a feeling of apology]. If Abe uses the word 反省 (translated as remorse) but not the word お詫び (apology), he will convey to English speaking audiences the impression that he is apologizing, but will make it clear to those who read his statement in Japanese, Korean or Chinese is that he is merely expressing 反省 and not お詫び.

DISPATCH JAPAN: How will Korea react if PM Abe omits the wording of the Murayama Statement – “aggression,” “colonial rule,” and “mistaken national policy”?
MORRIS-SUZUKI: I am deeply concerned about the likely impact of Abe’s 70th anniversary statement. If he uses the verbal strategies I have mentioned, these will not only fail to ease the painful memories of many people in Korea, China and elsewhere, but also deepen misunderstandings between East Asian countries and the English-speaking world. Many Americans and others, hearing the word “remorse”, will think that Abe has issued an apology, and fail to understand why Chinese and Koreans are still dissatisfied. In short, I am concerned that Abe and his advisors may be planning to use verbal games to send one message to the English speaking world and another to East Asian countries, including Japan itself. The terrible events of the Pacific War should be recalled with sincerity, honesty and directness, not with word games.

DISPATCH JAPAN: Do you think Abe a transformational figure, leading and reflecting fundamental changes in Japan?
MORRIS-SUZUKI: The Abe administration has already changed Japan in important ways through alterations to military strategy, state control of information, educational guidelines, trade and energy policy and other matters. In this sense Abe is a transformational figure; but it still too early to say whether he will succeed in carrying out the further and even more fundamental transformations, including changes to the constitution, which remain on his policy agenda.

DISPATCH JAPAN: Why does the Abe Cabinet receive high marks in public opinion polls, but low marks for its major policies?
MORRIS-SUZUKI: Public opinion is still reacting to the sense of crisis and absence of leadership which followed the triple disaster of March, 2011. Many people in Japan feel a profound sense of insecurity because of the ongoing aftermath of the disaster, the continuing weakness of the Japanese economy and the rise of China. In this situation, Abe’s large and simple statements about Japan’s revival and national pride are reassuring. Many people also still pin hopes on the future effects of Abenomics, even though, after two-and-a-half years, no significant positive impact on economic fundamentals or on the lives of ordinary Japanese people has yet been seen.

DISPATCH JAPAN: Is there a thought-out, realistic national strategy underlying “revisionism,” or is it more of a romantic whim about Japan.
MORRIS-SUZUKI: I believe that this is driven by emotion and ideology, not by political realism. A more realistic political strategy would positively and creatively address the concerns of China, Korea, and other Asian neighbors, since Japan’s long-term economic and security future rely on good relations with its neighbors. Revisionism is also creating deepening divisions within Japanese society itself. At a grassroots popular level, Japan has a fine history of efforts to seek reconciliation with neighboring countries and address problems of war responsibility. A more realistic national policy would build on these grassroots achievements, rather than ostracizing and marginalizing ordinary Japanese people who have worked so hard for reconciliation.

Abe ignores his Emperor - at his peril

‘Emperor Akihito favors an honest and long-overdue reckoning with Japan’s wartime past’

Interview by APP member, Peter Ennis of Dispatch Japan published January 23, 2015

Emperor Akihito raised many an eyebrow in Japan and abroad recently when he used his New Year message to urge Japan’s citizens to learn from history in this, the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. He specifically referred to the Manchurian Incident of 1931 as the start of the war, which many saw as a not-so-veiled swipe at Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and other advocates of a ‘revisonist’ view of history, who have tried to diminish Japan's responsibility for the hostilities in the Pacific that ultimately led to Japan’s destruction and surrender in 1945. The key passage in the Emperor’s message was:“This year marks the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, which cost many people their lives. Those who died on the battlefields, those who died in the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, those who died in the air raids on Tokyo and other cities-so many people lost their lives in this war. I think it is most important for us to take this opportunity to study and learn from the history of this war, starting with the Manchurian Incident of 1931, as we consider the future direction of our country.”The Emperor’s comment was initially overshadowed by the New Year’s festivities in Japan, but subsequently provoked a subdued but charged debate in intellectual and policy circles.

Below is the first of a two-part discussion about the controversy with Tokyo-based scholar and commentator Jeff Kingston. Professor Kingston is the director of Asian Studies at Temple University Japan, where he teaches courses on modern Japanese history, contemporary Japan, and Japan’s relations with Asia. He has been a regular contributor to The Japan Times since 1988. Kingston’s most recent book, Contemporary Japan, was published in 2012. He has a B.S. degree in foreign service from Georgetown University, and a PhD. in history from Columbia University.


DISPATCH JAPAN: Emperor Akihito referred to the Manchurian Incident of 1931 in several of his past birthday greetings, but never in a New Year’s message. Why do you think it is notable that he brought this up in his most recent New Year’s message?

KINGSTON: It is impossible to know what exactly Emperor Akihito intended with his 2015 New Year Thoughts. His comments were sufficiently vague to avoid giving the impression that he was infringing on constitutional limits that prevent him from weighing in on political issues.

The Imperial Household Agency carefully vets his remarks, so one can only speculate about the message he is trying to convey. In my opinion, the choice of topics is indicative, and must be considered in the context of Akihito’s track record on war responsibility. He has relentlessly crisscrossed the region over the past quarter of a century to express remorse to nations victimized by Japanese aggression.

Akihito has done more than all of Japan’s politicians combined to demonstrate that Japan is not in denial, and is contrite about the horrors it inflicted. Although revisionist politicians and the jingoistic press have worked hard to undermine the emperor’s reconciliation diplomacy, Akihito regards this as the unfinished business of the Showa Emperor (Akihito's father, Emperor Hirohito, who died in 1989), and persists in doing what he can in his circumscribed role.

His record suggests he favors an honest and long overdue reckoning. He has maintained his father’s post-1978 boycott of Yasukuni Shrine that was prompted by the enshrinement of 14 Class A war criminals at that time.

He also rebuked a Tokyo government official who explained to the monarch at an autumn 2004 garden party that he was in charge of enforcing a directive to teachers to stand and sing the national anthem (kimigayo) facing the national flag (Hinomaru). Akihito replied that this is not desirable, and should be left up to individual choice, comments he repeated in the Spring 2005 garden party. The Imperial Household Agency went into damage control mode, arguing that Akihito’s remarks held no political implications, even though they had clearly offered moral support to teachers who complained that their constitutional rights were being infringed on.

So when Akihito refers to the Manchurian Incident, he is weighing in on contemporary history controversies. Prime Minister Abe and like-minded revisionists seek to legitimize Japanese aggression, asserting that it was a war of Pan Asian liberation aimed at lifting the yoke of western subjugation. In addition, revisionists argue that it was a defensive war against escalating pressures from the western powers, the so-called ABCD (American, British, Chinese and Dutch) encirclement thesis.

But by pegging the war’s onset to 1931, Akihito inconveniently focused attention on the Kwantung Army’s plot in Mukden, which blamed ‘Chinese terrorists’ for a staged attack on Japan’s South Manchurian Railway, and used this as a pretext to launch a full-scale invasion and pacification of Manchuria.

This interpretation meshes with what scholars call the Fifteen Year War (1931-45), a reference to escalating Japanese aggression in China and a decision in 1940 to widen the war to Southeast Asia in order to secure the resources needed to subjugate China.

This narrative dismisses the Pan Asian liberation thesis as a fig-leaf for Japanese imperialism. Moreover, in 1931 Japan was not being encircled, but rather was carving off part of China to promote autarchy and prepare for the coming war with the US for hegemony in the Pacific. Ishiwara Kanji, the man who planned the Mukden Incident, was Japan’s foremost military strategist, and someone who had carefully studied the lessons of WWI. Total war meant a no-holds barred approach to winning, meaning that civilians were fair game and that economic sanctions were a weapon of war.

Ishiwara believed that Germany lost the war owing to economic sanctions that starved its war machine of what was required to wage war and thus became an advocate of economic autarchy. Manchuria had many of the resources Japan lacked that were crucial for its war machine, so taking it over was aimed at promoting autarchy and getting ready for the coming conflict. The Pan Asian thesis is more appealing to contemporary conservatives because it positions Japan as selfless and sacrificing for the benefit of others.

By contrast, the Manchurian thesis makes Japan look like a greedy predator, invading nations to secure resources and markets just like other imperial nations.

So Akihito’s apparently bland remarks actually resonate loudly in the arena of historiography. They position him in the camp critical of Japanese aggression, and critical of contemporary revisionists like Abe, who seek to rehabilitate Japan’s wartime past and assert a valorizing and vindicating narrative.

Akihito’s view represents the longstanding mainstream consensus in Japan (and elsewhere), but revisionists have bristled at this ‘masochistic’ history that singles Japan out for blame while overlooking Allied war crimes. They argue that the mainstream consensus is based on the judgments of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMFTE), a biased ‘victor’s justice’ narrative.

Judicial process at the IMFTE was indeed very flawed, and the guilty verdicts were preordained, but this doesn't mean that Japan’s military forces, or the architects of war called the Class A war criminals, were innocent. Revisionists often cite the dissenting opinion of Radhabinod Pal as exonerating Japan from the war crimes charges. A memorial to him is even located just outside the Yushukan Museum adjacent to Yasukuni Shrine, the talismanic ground zero for an unrepentant view of Japanese military aggression. In fact, Pal argued no such thing. He dismissed the IMFTE as lacking legal standing in international law, and for the baseless retroactive application of laws it allowed. But Pal readily acknowledged that Japan committed war crimes, and he lamented the fact that the Allies were not in the dock alongside the Japanese, sensibly pointing out that they should also be held accountable.

DISPATCH JAPAN: Why is this relevant to contemporary Japanese politics, and Japan’s national security policy?

KINGSTON: The judgments of the IMFTE, deeply flawed as they may be, are intrinsic to the Treaty of San Francisco that Japan signed to end the US occupation and make peace with the other signatories. In signing the treaty, Japan committed itself to accepting these judgments. Prime Minister Abe often talks about overthrowing the ‘postwar system’, one that most Japanese are rightly proud of. He is unhappy with the denunciatory view of wartime Japan and the US penned constitution, both essential elements of the postwar order that he believes humiliates Japan and keeps it subordinate.

In contrast, Akihito and most Japanese feel that Japan’s exemplary record in the second half of the 20th century brought redemption, and serves as the basis for the nation regaining its dignity. While Abe rails against the Peace Constitution, most Japanese see it as a reassuring touchstone of national identity. That is why his efforts to chip away at Article 9 are so unpopular. Hardly anyone in Japan supports Abe’s reinterpretation of Article. 9 to allow for collective self-defense, because they worry that Washington will drag them into war, and they understand that the new US-Japan Defense Guidelines will facilitate that scenario. Both governments keep postponing formal adoption of the guidelines precisely so they don’t become a liability to the LDP in elections.

DISPATCH JAPAN: So the political right finds itself in the interesting position of opposing the views of an Emperor in whose honor they claim to speak?

KINGSTON: The Emperor’s remarks highlight the horrors of war and send a strong anti-militarism, pro-peace message. He has enjoined Japanese citizens to reflect on the lessons of the past, perhaps because he has witnessed the culture wars since Abe came to power. Many Japanese and long-time Japan observers have expressed dismay about the recrudescence of self-righteous nationalism under Mr. Abe, who has emboldened right-wing extremists.

They have aggressively attacked liberal targets, such as the Asahi, and downplayed some of the more egregious examples of wartime Japan’s depredations, including the comfort women. Akihito is surely aware that Abe did nothing to repudiate colleagues in the Diet who worked to undermine the 1993 Kono Statement, in which Japan accepts responsibility and promises to atone for the sordid system of sexual slavery that involved tens of thousands of young women throughout Asia between 1932-1945. They were recruited through deception and/or coercion, both direct and indirect.

The Asahi’s admission that a handful of their reports on the comfort women over twenty years ago were based on the discredited testimony of Yoshida Seiji has been disingenuously used as a pretext to try to cast doubts on the nature and extent of this system and thereby promote a narrative of minimization and denial. Naturally, Team Abe is manipulating the Asahi affair for political advantage. This saga is, after all, more about politics than journalism, part of a larger culture war being waged by conservatives to redefine Japanese identity on their terms. The Asahi has long been the right’s main media adversary in this culture war and thus a prime target.

There is also the case of Net Uyoku (ultra-nationalists on the Internet) harassing former Asahi reporters and their university employers, threatening to harm students by deploying nail bombs if these former journalists’ contracts are not terminated. And the hate speech campaign promoted by the Zaitokukai (an organization devoted to denying rights to non-citizens – mostly Koreans – residing in Japan), harassing Japan’s zainichi (mostly Korean) community, again threatening death. Abe has tolerated this intolerance, and indeed has acted as cheerleader in chief for the anti-Asahi campaign. This is not the Japan that most Japanese feel comfortable with, and is not consistent with their national identity.

This is the context in which Akihito’s comments can be interpreted as a rebuke and warning.