The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 16 | Issue 23 | Number 1 | Article ID 5221 | Dec 01, 2018

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Grappling with Clientelism: The Japanese State and Okinawaunder Abe Shinzo

Gavan McCormack

Translation into Ukrainian by KateBelevets of OhMyEssay.com.

Resume

This is a slightly expanded version of the talkdelivered by the author upon the occasion ofthe launch of his The State of the JapaneseState at Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan(FCCJ), Tokyo, on 17 October 2018.1 It tracesthe evolution of Japan, especially under AbeShinzo, as a “client state” (defined byWikipedia as “a state that is economically,politically, or militarily subordinate to another,more powerful state”) of the United States. Itconsiders what I now refer to as Mark One andMark Two versions of that “client state” in thepost-Cold War era, and discusses the persistentchallenge to the clientelist frame arising fromthe Okinawan refusal to submit to it. It raisesfinally the possibility of either a Mark Three orof Japan’s future sloughing off client statestatus altogether. Taking off from the book, itgoes beyond it.

The Dependent State

It is more than 10 years since I began usingthe term “client state” (zokkoku) to refer topost-war and contemporary Japan, particularlythe early 21st century Japanese state of AbeShinzo , 2 adopt ing the gener ic term“clientelism” to refer to the patron-client

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character of the US-Japan relationship. Iborrowed the term not from any radical criticbut from the arch-conservative and formerDeputy Prime Minister Gotoda Masaharu, whoused it with the implication of absent or lostsovereignty. I use it to mean a state thatspontaneously chooses servitude, insisting onthe “alliance” with the US as its charter (withde facto priority over the constitution), on theabsolute privilege of the US military presencein Japan, especially in Okinawa, and on eitherconstitutional revision or revision of itsinterpretation (so as to allow “collectivesecurity” and “normal” military power (i.e.war).

I returned to the question of the Client State,considering especially its comparativedimension, in 2013,3 in discussions with JohnDower in 2014,4 and most recently, in my June2018 The State of the Japanese State. Othersemploy a similar framework. In 2016, ShiraiSatoshi and Uchida Tatsuru entitled their book“Zokkoku minshushugi” (Client StateDemocracy),5 and in 2018 Shirai published animportant study entitled “Kokutairon – Kiku toseijoki” (National Polity Theory – TheChrysanthemum and The Stars and Stripes)comparing the emperor-centred polity ofpre-1945 Japan with the servile-to-Americapost-1945 70-odd years, suggesting that bothpolities over time became exhausted, plungingJapan into existential crisis. 6 It became a non-fiction best-seller.

The servile or zokkoku line was rooted in thedefeat in war and seven-year long occupation ofJapan by the United States. The foundations ofthe state - the constitution of 1946 and the SanFrancisco Treaty of 1951 - laid then, haveremained more or less unaltered. Though ameasure of sovereignty was returned to Japanin 1952, through the four post-1952 decades ofthe Cold War the client state relationshippersisted, sank deep roots, and was relativelystable. The focus of the present essay is thequarter-century post-Cold War era, during

which the relationship has occasionally beencontested but the client (Japan) has insistedthat the patron (the United States) continue itspatron role, occupying bases and determiningkey policies.

As the foundations of long-term dependencewere laid, the Japanese emperor, Hirohito, tillwar’s end Commander-in-Chief of the ImperialJapanese Army and high-ranking war crimesuspect, became a favoured instrument of USpurpose and architect of the post-war state. Itwas at his suggestion that Okinawa wassevered from Japan under the San FranciscoTreaty settlement, that the country’s securitywas made to depend on “initiatives taken bythe United States, representing the Anglo-Saxons,”7 and (with his enthusiastic support)that Japan gave a positive answer to JohnFoster Dulles’ question: “Do we get the right tostation as many troops in Japan as we wantwhere we want and for as long as we want?That is the principle question.”8 Japan is uniquein today’s world in that its state structure wasessentially designed and built to the interestsof a foreign occupying power.

From Hirohito in the 1940s to today’s Abe, theclientelist path of submission to the globalsuper-power made sense on the understandingthat US global dominance and benevolencewould continue. Today both assumptions seemat best shaky. The geo-political and economicunderpinnings of the clientelist assumptionhave been rudely shaken. The US, now 16% ofglobal GDP, is expected to decline to 12% by2050 while China already 18%, is expected torise to 27% during the 2030s.9 As for the Japan-China relationship, China’s GDP, one-quarter ofthat of Japan as of 1991, surpassed it in2001,10 and, if the CIA World Factbook 2017 isto be believed, it is already more than 4-timesthat of Japan ($21.27 trillion to $4.92 trillion).That shift in relative weight disturbs andchallenges. The worry begins to spread that thetwo centuries of “Anglo-Saxon” hegemony,launched by the gunboats of the 19th century

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and maintained by overwhelming militarymight into the 21st, might be coming to an end.

The awareness has been slowly growing overthe quarter-century since the end of the ColdWar, among politicians, both “conservative”and “progressive,” and much of Japanese civilsociety, that it is inappropriate for Japan, now agreat economic power, to remain locked inservility to its erstwhile conqueror andoccupier, that it is t ime to move fromsubservience to autonomy. But how would sucha posture be articulated? Would the US tolerateit? Broadly speaking, the most influentialresponses have been on the right from AbeShinzo and his colleagues in organs such asNihon Kaigi, and on the left from relativelyliberal figures such as Hosokawa Morihiro(Prime Minister, 1993-4) and, a decade later,Hatoyama Yukio of the Democratic Party ofJapan (DPJ).

Clientelism, Mark One, 1993-2010

Abe Shinzo, first seated in the Diet in 1993,called for an end to the “post-war regime” andfor fundamental revision of the US-imposedpost-war system. He wanted to substitute forthe post-war state’s liberal democratic model ablend of neo-nationalism, historical revisionism,and neo-Shinto, rooted in the kokutai ornational polity of pre-war and wartime Japanand with the Yasukuni cult a core element inthe national psyche. The Abe of that Mark Oneera became actively involved in:

The Liberal View of Historymovement, launched 1995,

The Committee to Produce NewHistory Texts (Tsukurukai) in 1997,

The Dietmembers Association “forthe passing on of correct history”in 1995,

Nihon Kaigi [Japan Conference](established 1997),

The Shinto Pol i t ics League(founded 1969 but prominent fromthe late 1990s).

He imagined Japan, beneath the emperor, as aunique, superior, “beautiful country” as he putit in his 2006 book,11 or, as then Prime MinisterMori put it in 2000, “a land of the gods centredon the emperor.”

During Abe’s first term, 2006-7, he appears tohave believed it possible to “cast off” post-warstrictures and become a “normal” state (with afresh constitution and unshackled armedforces) while yet somehow continuing Japan’s“client state” relationship to the United States.But how was he simultaneously to affirm andnegate nationalism, to be at once assertive andyet dependent? What did Abe mean when hespoke of “taking Japan back” (Nihon otorimodosu)? From whom would he take it“back”? Where would he take it to? What did itsignify that he denied or equivocated about warresponsibility, Comfort Women and Nanjing,and insisted on rewriting Japanese history tomake people proud? Whether or not he wasconscious of the contradiction, Abe’s Mark Oneagenda was at odds with that of Washington’s“Japan handlers” (as they came to be known).During that first term, he kept away fromYasukuni and made only tentative stepstowards constitutional revision, but hisantipathy for the US-imposed institutions andhis fundamentalist ideology neverthelessworried Washington. Mission incomplete, heresigned in September 2007.

If Abe’s early post-Cold War project toequivocate the Client State was plainly areordering from the right, there were alsosignificant challenges to it from the left. Boththe liberal Hosokawa Morihiro government of1993-94, and the Democratic Party of Japan’sgovernment of 2009-10 envisaged a Japan-US

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relationship based on equality and a shift in thecountry’s axis from US-centred uni-polarismtowards multi-polarism. The “autonomists” (assome would call them) attempted to formulatean independent foreign policy tied to theUnited Nations and to disarmament,equidistant from China and the US, reducing oreliminating US military bases, interpreting theconstitution’s Article 9 strictly and favouringpositive engagement in the construction of anAsian or East Asian community. But the contestwas hopelessly unequal.

The Hosokawa government was relativelyshort-lived and never seriously pursued a“beyond clientelism” agenda although it didproduce one major paper offering tantalizingoutlines for such a policy. 1 2 A second“autonomous” line project evolved between2005 and 2012 under the Democratic Party ofJapan, reaching a climax with the governmentof Hatoyama Yukio in 2009-2010. In its 2005Manifesto the DPJ declared a commitment to“…do away with the dependent relationship inwhich Japan ultimately has no alternative but toact in accordance with US wishes, replacing itwith a mature alliance based on independenceand equality.” Even before it took office, itsmost effective leader, Ozawa Ichiro, famouslysuggested that US bases, notably those inOkinawa, were no longer necessary and thatthe 7th Fleet should suffice for US needs.

Washington’s response to the Hosokawa andthe Hatoyama challenges was unequivocallynegative. Instead it spelled out the principlesappropriate to a Japanese client state in a 1995report, commonly known after its primaryauthor (Joseph Nye) as the “Nye Report.” Anydiminution of US military hegemony wasunthinkable since East Asian security dependedon the “oxygen” of US military presence andtherefore on preservation of the bases andretaining 100,000 soldiers based in Japan andKorea. It meant denying full sovereignty to bothEast Asian countries. The US would continue toexercise the right to dictate policy.13

Nye, together with Richard Armitage and theEast Asian scholar-bureaucrats who made upthe Centre for Strategic and InternationalStudies (CSIS), followed that 1995 report byothers in 2000, 2007, 2012, and again in 2018,on the US-Japan relationship and the stancerequired of Japan.14 These policy papers spelledout the legal and institutional reforms toreinforce the Alliance and consolidate Japan’sservility.

The Nye/CSIS frame of thinking was/ispredicated on distrust of Japan and belief in theneed for US military occupation to continueindefinitely. It reflects not just bitter memoriesof the war experience but also the paternalismof General MacArthur to whom the Japanese (in1951) were a juvenile and immature peopleaged just twelve years old compared to the 45-years old Anglo-Saxons and Germans,15 and theview of Henry Kissinger (a senior adviser andcounse l lor to CSIS) – as he put i t inconversation with Zhou Enlai in 1971 – of theJapanese people as erratic and dangerous,needing to be restrained. It was the militarydominance of the United States, according toKissinger, that “keeps Japan from pursuingaggressive policies.”16 The Marine Corps’ MajorGeneral Henry Stackpole referred to the sameconcept in 1990, as the “cap in the bottle,” as ifthe US forces were occupying bases in Japan inorder to protect Asia from Japan.17

For threatening to dissolve the mechanism ofclientelism, the DPJ government of HatoyamaYukio (September 2009 to May 2010) wassubject to a relentless barrage of warnings,threats and insults, of a kind that only asuperior state could possibly issue to itssubordinate or client. No other major ally hadever been subjected to anything like it. Lying,deception, secret deals, cover-up andmanipulation characterized the alliance.18

The attempt to formulate a post-Clientelist,“autonomous” line national direction failedboth in 1993-5 and in 2009-10.

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Clientelism, Mark Two, 2012-2017

During those years between his first andsecond government (2007-2012) Abe appearsto have concluded that he would have to stripoff his “nationalist” garb and concentrate onperforming the tasks expected of a subordinatestate, steering the country into a new anddeeper phase of Clientelism, Clientelism MarkTwo it might be called.

Just months before his return to office, CSISissued its third Report, cautioning Japan tothink carefully as to whether or not it wanted toremain a “tier-one” nation.19 By that it meantwas Japan ready to do what was required of itby the US, to “stand shoulder-to-shoulder,”send naval groups to the Persian Gulf and theSouth China Sea, relax its restrictions on armsexports, increase its defence budget andmilitary personnel numbers, maintain itsannual subsidy to the Pentagon ($7 to $8 billionper year by way of “host nation” or “omoiyari”(sympathy) budget,2 0 press ahead withconstruction of new base facilities in Okinawa,Guam, and the Mariana Islands, and reviseeither its constitution or the way it isinterpreted so as to facilitate “collective selfdefence,” i.e. merging its forces with those ofthe US for dispatch to regional and globalbattlefields. If Japan balked at any of this,Washington intimated, it would simply slideinto “tier-two” status, and that, clearly, wouldbe beneath contempt.

Just months after his December 2012 electoraltriumph, Abe hastened to Washington. Thoughhis reception at the White House was cold,across town at CSIS his Japan handler peerslistened appreciatively as he responded to theArmitage challenge:

“Secretary Armitage, here is myanswer to you.

Japan is not, and will never be, aTier-two country.”21

He meant: We will do as we are told.

Zokkoku – Beikoku no hoyo to Ajia de nokoritsu, Tokyo, Gaifusha, 2008

(Japanese edition of Client State, Japan inthe American Embrace, 2007)

The CSIS demands thereby were adopted asJapanese government policy. The long-established interpretation of the constitutionwas changed in 2014 - and fleshed out with asecurity legislation package adopted in 2015 -to allow Japanese forces under certainconditions to be dispatched abroad on missionsof Collective Self-Defence (i.e. to behave as a

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real “Tier One” country). But if he thought thathis general compliance on strategic andmilitary matters would persuade Washington towithdraw its objections to his neo-nationalistideology and his commitment to Yasukuni, hewas wrong. When he went ahead, in December2013, to make a formal Yasukuni visit theClinton administration issued a stinging rebuke– publicly expressing “disappointment.”Challenged, he stepped back. Henceforth, andto this day, however painful it must be to him,he has kept away from Yasukuni. 22 Instead, here-focussed his message. “Positive pacifism,”which he adopted as an alternative watchword,was music to Washington’s ears because itmeant cooperation in US military and strategicagendas. However bizarre the notion, for Abethe United States was the epitome of “positivepacifism.”

Thus Abe during the years of his secondgovernment (from December 2012) abandonedhis radical constitutional agenda and neo-nationalist principles to perform a purer formof clientelism, with no more talk of “takingJapan back” or of “going beyond the post-warsystem.” In April 2015, he was therefore (atlast) honoured with a state visit to Washington,an address to a joint sitting of the two Housesof Congress, and a press conference with thepresident. The bilateral relationship wasacclaimed as an “alliance of hope” and declared(by Joseph Nye) to be in “the best condition indecades.”23

By 2017, the priorities of his government werevery different from those he had professedwhen first assuming office twelve years earlier.In this Clientelism Mark Two, the sometimenationalist fire-brand intent on remaking thestate in accord with a grand post-Cold War,post-servile programme morphed into a faithfulservant of the US cause, a conventional LDPleader,24 prioritizing the alliance even if itmeant sacrificing his own domestic supportbase, as indeed he did, watering down hisconstitutional revision program to a feeble,

contradictory minimum,25 and bowing toAmerican pressure to adopt, in December2015, a “final and irrevocable” solution to theComfort Women issue by agreement with thegovernment of South Korea, angering hissupporters.

Following Donald Trump’s advent to thepresidency in 2017, Abe paid especial care tonurture the bilateral relationship. With no otherworld leader did Trump so relish rounds of golfor consult so often, whether directly or bytelephone. As the personal relationship seemedto flower, Abe committed Japan to a new levelof incorporation in the projection of UShegemony over global land, sea, space, andcyber-space. In an impromptu, but revealing,exchange in November 2017, Trump had this tosay,

“So one of the things, I think,that's very important is that thePrime Minister of Japan is going tobe purchasing massive amounts ofmilitary equipment, as he should.And we make the best militaryequipment, by far . He' l l bepurchasing it from the UnitedStates. Whether it's the F-35fighter, which is the greatest in theworld -- total stealth -- or whetherit's missiles of many differentkinds, it's a lot of jobs for us and alot of safety for Japan and othercountries.”26

Put on the spot, Abe responded saying, “we willbe buying more from the United States. That iswhat I'm thinking.” After their meeting, Abewas true to his word, having cabinet confirmthe Japanese purchases of several dozen F-35fighters, two Aegis Ashore missile defensesystems, and one, or more likely two, aircraftcarriers. Already by the end of the fifth year ofhis second term, he had increased by 4.5 times(compared to the five preceding years) the

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amount spent by Japan on weapons and weaponsystems, almost all of US make. And in 2018,the LDP (Abe’s party) called on government todouble defence expenditure to reach the NATO(nominal) level of 2 per cent of GDP.27

Okinawa – The Client State’s (Reluctant)Client State

The price of Japan’s post-San Francisco Treaty“peace s ta te” was Ok inawa ’ s “warstate.”28 Even after its nominal “reversion toJapan from US military control in 1972, it stillconstituted the base of the pyramid of military-firstism, Japanese subordination to Americanmilitary power. The political history of Okinawain the subsequent 46 years has been one ofresistance to the assigned status of Client Stateof the United States’ Client State of Japan.

The two governments (US and Japan) madevarious agreements, in 1996, 2006, 2009, 2010,2011, 2013, and again in 2017, to construct ona reclaimed site offshore from Henoko on OuraBay in Okinawa’s north a “replacement facility”for the Futenma Marine Corps base currentlylocated in the middle of Ginowan townshipadjacent to the prefectural capital, Naha. Theproject was rejected by Okinawa from the start,first by a Nago City plebiscite in 1997, andsince then by numerous resolutions of theOkinawan parl iament and successivestatements by representative public figures.However, in December 2013 then GovernorNakaima Hirokazu bowed to immense pressurefrom the Japanese government and consented,despite the pledge to the contrary upon whichhe had been elected, to grant permission forreclamation of a site at Henoko on Oura Bay inthe north of the island for the Futenmareplacement base. The prefecture wasoutraged. Nakaima was dismissed from officein a subsequent gubernatorial election,defeated by a massive 100,000 votes by OnagaTakeshi, who stood on a platform of oppositionto any such construction.

Despite the clear expression of prefecturalsentiment against it, preliminary site workswere undertaken in 2015. They were delayed orblocked by various legal and administrativesteps on the part of Governor Onaga, andcompletely halted through much of 2016. InDecember 2016, however, the Supreme Courtru led aga ins t Ok inawa. Survey andconstruction works resumed in the followingApril and continued through mid-2018. Convoysof trucks, sometimes 300 or more in a singleday, plied the Okinawan highways while shipsladen with materials circled the island. Sea-walls snaked out across the Bay. The projectsteadily moved forward.

For Okinawa, in other words, Japan’s clientelistnational polity called for transformation of oneof nature’s greatest natural treasure-housesinto a fortress from which the United Statescould continue indefinitely projecting its powerover East Asia in accord with the San Franciscoformula. It was, as I have noted,

“counter to the moves towardsregional peace, cooperation andcommunity , counter to thepr inc ip le o f reg iona l se l f -government spelled out in theconstitution, counter to theprinciples of democracy andcounter to the imperative ofenvironmental conservation.”29

In June 2018, the government made known itsintention to commence the actual reclamationfrom 17 August. That prompted GovernorOnaga to declare, on 27 July, that he wasinitiating formal steps for rescission of thereclamation license. However, with the strainof constant pressure and confrontation with thegovernment of the country a likely contributoryfactor, Onaga fell ill, underwent surgery forremoval of a cancerous pancreatic tumour inApril and after a further brief spell in hospitaldied on 8 August. The prefectural revocation

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process nevertheless continued, and from 31August works were again suspended.30

Again, however, the state moved quickly tostrike down the prefecture’s protest. Thegovernment’s Okinawan Defence Bureau calledon I sh i i Ke i - i ch i , Min is ter o f Land ,Infrastructure, and Transportation, to reviewthe revocation under the Administrative AppealAct and to issue an order cancelling its effect.There could be little doubt of the outcome asone section of government was called upon toreview and pronounce on the legitimacy of theacts of another. As the Ryukyu shimpo put it(unusually posting its own editorial on the webin English),

“To begin with, the AdministrativeAppeal Act was passed with thepurpose of supporting citizens’rights and interests when agovernment agency acts illegallyor inappropriately. Therefore, thegovernment itself cannot use thesame law in this way … For thegovernment to abuse the systemmade for a regular citizen byinsisting that the ODB [OkinawaDefence Bureau, the Okinawansection of the Department ofDefence] is a ‘private entity’ ist a n t a m o u n t t o f r a u d . T h egovernment is once again takingunthinkably tyrannical measures…”31

A statement issued over the signatures of 110administrative law specialists from throughoutJapan declared the government to be acting“illegally … lacking in impartiality or fairness,”and that it “failed to qualify as a state ruled bylaw.”32 Fraudulent or not, on 30 OctoberMinster Ishii did as was required of him,finding the rescission “unreasonable” and“likely to undermine relations of trust withJapan’s security ally, the United States.”33 He

suspended the effect of the prefecturalrevocation order, whereupon, brushing asideoutraged Okinawan protests, the OkinawaDefense Bureau (for the government) orderedworks at Oura Bay resumed. After a two-monthsuspension, they resumed on 3 November.

In the interim, Tamaki Denny - widely seen asOnaga’s polit ical heir, inherit ing hiscommitment to stop Henoko works - waselected Governor. The election result, despitean unprecedented level of national governmentintervention to try to secure the election of amore amenable candidate, made clear theprefecture’s continuing refusal to be cowed. Itwas undoubtedly a bitter blow to Abe that thepeople of Okinawa should have overwhelminglyrejected his candidate for Governorship ofOkinawa immediately after has own triumph inbeing elected re-head of his party and de factohead of government for three more years.

Tamaki Denny, elected Governor ofOkinawa, 30 September 2018

The struggle between nation state andprefecture thus goes on. Despite the bitternessof that confrontation, it is the Okinawans,ironically, who take Abe (the Abe of ClientelismMark One) literally in seeking to go “beyondthe post-war system” and to “take back” Japan.For them, of course, it is Okinawa that is to betaken back. All attempts over decades by thetwo governments (including especially intense

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efforts by Prime Minister Abe through theseven years of his second term) to persuade,buy off, or intimidate the people of Okinawainto submission to the clientelist, military-firstprescription have failed. The dispute will returnto the courts in the near future, at which pointthe government can confidently expect to bevictorious. However, even with the state’smore-or-less assured judicial victory, withoutGovernor Tamaki’s consent, resumption ofworks at Henoko/Oura Bay seems improbable,for reasons now as much technical as politicalor ecological. Specialist engineers doubt thatthe massive concrete and steel structureplanned, in its present design, could be stablyimposed on the site. They insist (as did theprefecture in its formal statement of revocationof the Nakaima license,34 that for the project toproceed the original design would have to befundamentally redrawn to take into accountfactors only recently come to light, such as thesoft, “mayonnaise-like” floor of Oura Bay andthe active fault line that bisects it.35

Whether Governor Tamaki will have thefortitude to withhold his consent as thegovernment struggles to drastically revise itsreclamation and construction plan remains tobe seen. If the prefecture chooses to refusecooperation at every step, court proceedingsfollowing court proceedings, the project will beindefinitely postponed and the US governmentmay come to doubt its wisdom and viability.Such doubts may indeed already be spreading,as the editorial board of the New York Times’unusually harsh denunciation of the baseconstruction project as “an unfair, unwantedand often dangerous burden on Japan’s poorestcitizens” suggested.36

However, a qualification has to be entered.Tamaki takes a narrow view of the Okinawan“base problem,” essentially confining hisobjections to the Henoko project. He takes noposition on the helipad works in the Yambaruforest of the north or on the Abe government’srapidly advancing plans for the extension of

military (i.e., Japanese Self-Defence Force)facilities through the Southwest islandsadjacent to Okinawa island itself, notablyMiyako, Ishigaki, and Yonaguni. Moreover, heinherits from Onaga support for the “return” ofNaha Military Port, promised by agreementbetween the two countries in 1974, anastonishing 44-years ago. Such “reversion,” likethat of Futenma, was made dependent onconstruction of an alternative, for which theadjacent Urasoe City, like Nago in the case ofHenoko, was designated. As “reversion” ofFutenma Marine Air Station was predicated onconstruction of the much expanded andupgraded Henoko facility, likewise that of NahaMilitary Port was to mean major new baseconstruction at Urasoe. On current estimates,that transfer might occur in 2028.37

Naha Military Port, Aerial Photo fromGlobal Security

Furthermore, Governor Tamaki was no soonerelected than he indicated a readiness toconsider one of the key “Japan handler”demands for the Japanese client state: thetransformation of military bases in Okinawafrom single (US or Japan) management and useto “joint” facilities.38 The publication of hisinterview clarifying this stance appeared in theright-wing national newspaper, SankeiShimbun, almost simultaneously with thereport of the CSIS paper making precisely that

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demand as part of a design to reinforce the US-Japan alliance. By signalling readiness toconsider the base-sharing and closecooperation of Japanese and US forces longfavoured by alliance managers in Washington,Tamaki was consenting to a key part of theclientelist agenda.39 He confirmed this pro-Security Treaty, pro-base stance in speeches inTokyo and New York in November 2018.40

Clientelism, Mark Three? 2018 -

Late in 2018, the question is this: is it possible,as Abe Shinzo contemplates the agenda for histhird term as Prime Minister, that he mightbegin to formulate a Mark Three version of theAbe state, establ ishing a measure ofindependence of his erratic and overbearingtrans-Pacific partner without antagonizing it,and seeking a new, substantially autonomousrole as member of an East Asian or NortheastAsian community?41 Can he square the circle?

While struggling to maintain his posture ofloyal follower, crucial support of the US-ledalliance system directed against Russia, China,and North Korea, from 2017 Abe began to showinterest in alternative, even opposite schemes,notably the Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putindesigns for a post-San Francisco Treatyorder.42 It meant paying attention to theRussian and Chinese-led BRICS, the ChineseBelt and Road Initiative (BRI), the ShanghaiCooperation Organization (SCO) and the(Russian) Eastern Economic Forum.

Meeting at Vladivostok in September 2017,China, Russia, North and South Korea, andJapan (Abe himself), in the absence of theUnited States, discussed plans for openingm u l t i p l e l i n e s o f c o o p e r a t i o n a n dcommunication across the region, extendingSiberian oil and gas pipelines to the two Koreasand Japan and opening railways and portslinking Japan and Korea across Siberia toChina, Russia, and beyond. South Korea’s

President Moon also elaborated on what hecalled “Northeast Asia-plus,” extending andconsolidating those vast, China- and Russia-centred geo-political and economic groupingsthrough promotion of “nine bridges ofcooperation” (gas, railroads, ports, electricity, anorthern sea route, shipbuilding, jobs,agriculture, and fisheries).

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Even before the Vladivostok meetings, Japanand Russia had defined a set of “priorityprojects” for cooperation, ranging across thedevelopment of Eastern Siberia and NorthernRussia, especially resources (oil and gas), butalso infrastructural, at their most ambitiousincluding a railway crossing by tunnel underthe Soya [La Perouse] Strait between Hokkaidoand Sakhalin and a bridge across the Mamiya[Tartar] Strait between Sakhalin and Siberia(just 7.3 kilometres at its narrowest point),establishing a through rail link from Japan viathe Trans-Siberian and BAM railway systems toChina, Russia, the Indian sub-continent, theMiddle East and Europe,

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including a “throughKorea” (i.e. across North Korea) rail link.

Under the Vladivostok formula, the Beijing SixParty Talks formula of 2003–2008 wouldbecome “Five Plus One,” with the United Statesreduced to non-participant “observer.”Unstated, but plainly crucial, North Koreawould accept the security guarantee of the five(Japan included), refrain from any furthernuclear or missile testing, shelve (“freeze”) itsexisting programs and gain its longed for“normalization” in the form of incorporation inregional groupings, the lifting of sanctions andnormalized relations with its neighbour states.

For Japan, the various grand designsemanating from Beijing, Moscow, or Seoul heldthe potential for it to open a path to re-negotiate its relationship with the US beyondclientelism and towards an equal bilateralrelationship, with bases liquidated, leading indue course to diplomatic recognition of NorthKorea and the resumption of the Japan-North

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Korea reconciliation process that was begunbut then suspended under Prime MinisterKoizumi (in 2002). In such a scenario, Northand South Korea would become points ofJapanese engagement in the process ofNortheast Asian and Siberian cooperation andcommunity building, towards the ultimate goalof a post-San Francisco regional peace andcooperation community replacing the “hub andspokes” US-hegemonic, San Francisco Treatysystem. The Vladivostok conferences (of 2017and 2018) showed that grand schemes, hithertolittle more than pipe dreams, were on drawingboards in Moscow and Tokyo as well as Beijing,Seoul, and Pyongyang.

China contacts notably warmed in 2018. Thetwo countries are said to have agreed atVladivostok in September 2018 to coordinatetheir response to US trade war pressures.Weeks later, Abe undertook the first visit by aJapanese leader to China since 2011, heading aJapanese delegation comprising not onlyForeign and Trade Ministers but a largecontingent of Japanese business leaders. Abeand Chinese Premier Li Keqiang spoke oftransformation of the bilateral relationship“from competition to collaboration,” anddiscussed possible projects for collaboration,including “about fifty” infrastructural projectsin third countries around the world.45 They alsoagreed to open negotiations on East China Seacooperative development, implying a readinessto set aside the conflicting claims to theSenkaku/Daioyu islands that for seven yearshad proved an insuperable obstacle tonegotiations.

Prime Minister Abe with President XiJinping, Beijing, October 2018

(Photo by Ministry of Foreign Affairs,Tokyo)

For Abe to proceed with such plans would be torelativize and downgrade the Ampo securityrelationship, something which he hasrepeatedly insisted he will not do.

The delegation of Japanese executives toBeijing that Abe led in 2018, at 500-strong -was even larger than the Hatoyama-Ozawamission of 2009 that stirred virtual apoplexy onthe part of the US government and a reversalthat swept Hatoyama’s government from officeless than a year later. Then, Hatoyama wassuspected of a scheme to recast the region’sdiplomatic and security frame by constructionof a Northeast Asian community. Now, Japanhandlers in Washington must wonder, as theycontemplate the Abe celebrations in Beijing,whether they are facing a re-run of Hatoyama.

The newly warmed and cooperative Japan-China relationship does not sit easily with thesteadily chilling US China one. The Abe mission

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occurred just weeks after a major speech by USVice-President Mike Pence that has beenwidely seen as marking a new US-China ColdWar.46 Pence denounced China’s “whole-of-government approach” apparently designed to“push the United States of America from theWestern Pacific,” and declared intent tomaintain and if necessary intensify punitivesanctions against it. Japan’s commitment to anew East Asian collaborative system certainlystruck a different note. It remains to be seenhow Abe, evidently chafing at the clientelist bit,will deal with US pressure for all countrieswishing to maintain close ties with the UnitedStates to drastically cut their trade andinvestment links to China.47

Conclusion

Abe’s initial attempt (Clientelism, Mark One) toliquidate the post-war, American-grantedregime and construct in its stead a state thatblended military, diplomatic and economicservility to the United States with a Shintoist,“beaut i fu l ” and “new” Japan , and acomprehensively revised constitution. It wasplainly unacceptable to Washington.Clientelism, Mark Two, of 100 per cent supportfor the US, reached a peak at the time of“America First” in 2017, and it seemed for atime that however erratic, violent or damaging(to Japan) the policies required, Abe wouldcling to it. Although vacillating on the questionof state posture, Clientelism Mark One andMark Two versions shared much commonagenda, setting aside the democratic, citizen-based, anti-militarist Japan, widening stateprerogatives, circumscribing citizen rights,reinforcing national security. However, as hebegan his third and final term, there were signsthat Abe might be close to the limits of histolerance.

CSIS’s 2018 report made elliptical reference to“cracks” that were “starting to show in thealliance.” One wonders, what cracks? Japan is

known to have been unhappy with the US overthe Trump withdrawal from TPP and later fromthe Iran nuclear agreement and the moves inthe direction of trade war with China, as wellas Trump’s apparently casual comment to aCongressman in September 2018 that thecurrent “good relations with the Japaneseleadership” might end “as soon as I tell themhow much they have to pay,”48 which must haveshocked, and perhaps angered Abe. Likewisethere have been doubts in Tokyo as to whetherthe US and Japan were really on the same pagewhen it came to North Korea policy, perhapsespecially once Trump began to speak of his“love” for the North Korean leader. Suchdoubts may have led to the “secret” (i.e.without American consent) meetings betweenJapan and North Korea in Vietnam in July2018.49 If such developments are what CSISrefers to as “cracks,” they appear to be highlyconsequential ones, with the potential ofwidening onto a fissure that could threaten theSan Francisco treaty system.

Prime Minister Abe declares repeatedly thatJapan is a country of universal values,democratic, recognizing basic human rightsand the rule of law, while virtually all membersof his government belong to an organization,Nihon Kaigi, whose rightist, blend of neo-conservatism, neo-nationalism, and historicalrevisionism would in any other contemporarydemocratic state be seen as extremist or ultra-nationalist and therefore beyond the pale. Tobe able to advance universalist democraticprinciples, and to play the global role of whichit ought be capable in the struggle for thecause of humanity in an epoch of climatechange, global warming, and species loss, forthe outlawing of nuclear weapons, thesubstitution of renewables for nuclear andfossil fuel energy systems, and for regional andglobal peace, will depend on Japan firstaccomplishing national sovereignty, a pathbeyond clientelism. How to get a governmentthat will do this is the problem the Japanesepeople face.

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The series of high-level internationalconferences in 2018 addressing Korean issuesshow how suddenly war preparation can giveway to peace cooperation and long-frozendiplomatic logjams break-up. If a peace treatyto end the Korean War can suddenly – evenshockingly as was the case in 2018 - be putonto the bargaining table, so can the closure

and return of the American bases in Okinawa,and the liquidation of the dominance of Japanand Korea by the United States that Hirohito in1947 and Joseph Nye in 1995 insisted wasindispensable. Clientelism need not be forever.

Gavan McCormack is emeritus professor at the Australian National University and afounding editor of the Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus. He is author of many works onmodern and contemporary East Asia, most recently Resistant Islands: Okinawa versus Japanand the United States, co-authored with Satoko Oka Norimatsu, 2nd, revised and expandededition, Rowman and Littlefield, 2018, and The State of the Japanese State – ContestedIdentity, Direction, and Role, Renaissance Books, 2018.

Kate Belevets is a translator for OhMyEssay.com.

Notes1 The State of the Japanese State: Contested Identity, Direction and Role Folkestone, Kent:Renaissance Books, 2018.2 Client State: Japan in the American Embrace, New York, Verso, 2007 (in Japanese fromGaifusha, Korean from Changbi, and Chinese from Social Science Academic Press of China,all 2008). See especially the discussion in the Japanese edition.3 For my analysis of the British and Australian cases, and brief reference to Korea, Israel, andLatin America, see my “Zokkokuron,” in Kimura Akira and Magosaki Ukeru, Owaranai‘Senryo’ (The Unending Occupation), Kyoto, Horitsu Bunkasha, 2013, pp. 18-38. (Englishversion at "Japan’s Client State (Zokkoku) Problem," The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus,June 24, 2013).4 See our Tenkanki no nihon e – Pakkusu Amerikana ka, Pakkusu Ajia ka, Tokyo, NHKShuppan shinsho No 423, Tokyo, January 2014.5 Uchida Tatsuru and Shirai Satoshi, Zokkoku minshushugi, Tokyo, Toyo keizai, 2016.6 Shirai Satoshi, Kokutai-ron – Kiku to seijoki, Tokyo, Shueisha shinsho, 2018. And for a shortstatement of his thesis, “Okinawa to kokutai,” Days Japan, vol. 15, No. 10, October 2018, pp.4-11.7 For further discussion, see my The State of the Japanese State, pp. 9 ff.8 Ibid, p. 15.9 OECD, The Long View: Scenarios for the World Economy to 206010 Terashima Jitsuro, “Noryoku no ressun,” No 192, “Chugoku no kyodaika kyokenka wo seishisuru, Nihon no kakugo,” Sekai, April 2018, pp. 42-47 at p. 42. See also IMF, World Economic

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Outlook, 2018.11 Abe Shinzo, Utsukushii kuni e, Tokyo, Bungei shunju, 2006.12 Boei mondai kondankai, “Nihon no anzen hosho to boeiryoku no arikata – 21 seiki e muketeno tenbo (The Modality of the Security and Defence Capability of Japan - The Outlook for the21st Century), Higuchi ripoto, 12 August 1994.13 Gavan McCormack and Satoko Oka Norimatsu, Resistant Islands – Okinawa versus Japanand the United States [Rowman and Littlefield, 2012, second, expanded edition, 2018], p. 64.14 Richard L. Armitage and Joseph S. Nye, eds, “More Important than Ever: Renewing the US-Japan Alliance for the 21st Century,” Washington, CSIS, October 2018.15 MacArthur told a US Senate Committee on 5 May 1951, “If the Anglo-Saxon was say 45years of age in his development, in the sciences, the arts, divinity, culture, the Germans werequite as mature. The Japanese, however, in spite of their antiquity measured by time, were ina very tuitionary condition. Measured by the standards of modern civilization, they would belike a boy of twelve as compared with our development of 45 years.” (John Dower, EmbracingDefeat: Japan in the Wake of World War ll, New York, W.W. Norton, 1999, p. 550).MacArthur’s view matched that of Hirohito, who referred disparagingly to the Japanesepeople as “lacking in education,” marked by “a willingness to be led,” and prone to “swayfrom one extreme to the other.” (most likely between April and July 1946, see Dower, “Amessage from the Showa emperor,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, 31, 4, 1999, pp.19-24.)16 “Memorandum of conversation,” 9 July 1971, Department of State, Foreign Relations of theUnited States, 1969-1976, vol. 17, China, 1969-1972.17 Fred Hiatt, “Major General, US troops must stay in Japan” Washington Post, 27 March1990.18 For details, see The State of the Japanese State, especially chapter 3.19 Richard Armitage and Joseph S. Nye, “The US-Japan Alliance: Anchoring Stability in Asia,”CSIS (Centre for Strategic and International Studies), August 2012. This report, publishedmonths before the 2012 presidential election, laid out the position expected to be the kernelof East Asian policy for the incoming administration.20 Gavan McCormack and Satoko Oka Norimatsu, Resistant Islands: Okinawa confronts Japanand the United States, pp. 193-6.21 “Japan is back,” Abe Shinzo speech to CSIS, 22 February 2013.22 While abandoning Yasukuni, he compensated by performing comparable, emperor-centredrituals at Ise Shrine.23 The State of the Japanese State, p. 40.24 See discussion in Kaji Yasuo, “”Abe ‘kaiken’ an no meiso ga shisa suru mono,” Sekai, April2018, pp. 178-190.25 Retaining Article 9’s two current paragraphs but adding a third, declaring the legitimacy ofthe Self-Defence Forces as a National Defence Army (kokubogun). The adoption of such athird clause implied that the SDF until the moment of revision had not been constitutionallylegitimate. (At time of writing the formal constitutional revision package was yet to beannounced, but this author assumes it will be minimalist and in line with the patternsuggested here, designed to establish the principle of revision while postponing the “real”agenda to a more propitious time.

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26 “Remarks by President Trump and Prime Minister Abe of Japan in Joint Press Conference,”Tokyo, Japan,” The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, November 06, 2017.27 “Boeihi ‘tai-GDP 2%’ meiki, jimin boei taiko teigen no zenyo hanmei,” Sankei shimbun, 25May 2018.28 For details, see McCormack and Norimatsu, op. cit.29 The State of the Japanese State, pp. 246-730 For details see my “The Abe state and Okinawan protest – High Noon 2018,” The Asia-Pacific Journal- Japan Focus, 7 August 2018. 31 “The Japanese government suing to allow land filling is a reckless trampling of democracy,”editorial, Ryukyu shimpo, 18 October 2018 (in English).32 “Henoko shin kichi, gyoseiho kenkyusha 110 nin no seimeibun zenbun,” Okinawa taimusu,31 October 2018.33 Kyodo, “Okinawa governor meets top gov't official over US base transfer,” The Mainichi, 6November 2018,34 See, for example, the letter from Governor Onaga to Nakashima Koichiro, head of the ODB,“Futenma hikojo daitai shisetsu kensetsu jigyo ni kansuru sokuji koji teishi yokyu nado nitsuite, ” Prefectural press release, 17 July, 201835 The State of the Japanese State, pp. 246-7.36 The Editorial Board, “Toward a smaller American footprint on Okinawa,” New York Times, 1October 2018.37 “Naha Port,” Global Security.org (accessed 10 November 2018)38 “Tamaki Deni-shi, Jieitai to Beigun no kichi kyodo shiyo kyogi mo, intabyu de hyomei,okinawa ken chijisen,” Sankei shimbun, 2 October 2018.39 See the CSIS reports of 2012 and 2018 cited in footnotes 15 and 20 above.40 To the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan on 9 November and to New York Universityon 11 November. See discussion in Kihara Satoru, “Okinawa, Bei sentoki FA18 no suiraku wanani o shimesu ka,” Ari no hitokoto, 15 November 2018. 41 “Japan is worried about its alliance with America,” The Economist, 6 September 2018.42 The following discussion of the Vladivostok meetings follows that in my The State of theJapanese State, pp. 145-149.43 “Moon daitoryo,” op. cit.; James O’Neill, “North Korea and the UN sanctions merry goround,” New Eastern Outlook, 18 September 2017. 44 At 43 kilometres long and up to 70 meters deep, the Soya Strait would be an expensiveproject but probably no more technically difficult than the existing Japanese Seikan tunnelunder the Tsugaru Strait between Honshu and Hokkaido (53 kilometres long and 140 metersdeep). Kiriyama Yuichi, “Shiberia tetsudo no Hokkaido enshin, Roshia ga keizai kyoryoku deyobo,” Shukan ekonomisuto, 15 November 2016, p. 22.45 Yohei Muramatsu, “Sino-US trade war casts shadow over economic forum in Beijing,”Nikkei Asian Review, October 27, 2018. Steven Lee Myers and Motoko Rich, “Shinzo Abe saysJapan is Chna’s ‘partner’ and no longer its aid donor,” New York Times, 26 October 2018. Seealso David Hurst, “Abe wants ‘new era’ in China-Japan relations,” The Diplomat, 26 October2018.46 Hudson Institute, “Remarks by Vice President Pence on the Administration’s Policy towardChina,” Foreign Policy, 4 October 2018.

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47 It seems likely that Japan will soon be put to the test on this if the US insists, as expected,on inclusion in the bilateral US-Japan trade deal about to be negotiated of a clause such as inthe US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) adopted on 1 October 2018 blocking anyagreement with China not endorsed by the US. (Lee Jeong-ho, Keegan Elmer, and Zhou Xin,“China ‘threatened with isolation’ by veto written into US-Mexico-Canada trade deal,” SouthChina Morning Post, 3 September 2018.)48 Tyler Duirden, “USDJPY tumbles after Trump hints at Japan trade war next,” Zerohedge, 6September 2018.49 Danielle Demetriou, “Japan and North Korea held secret meeting as Shinzo Abe ‘loses trust’in Donald Trump,” Telegraph News Online, 29 August 2018.