Michael Penn, Executive Director of the Shingetsu Institute for the Study of Japanese-Islamic Relations, discusses the (nearly) first electoral loss for Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party since 1955, the balance between Japanese resentment over U.S. troop presence and the security of military protection, Japanese energy policy in the Middle East and how warmer relations with China would mean reduced dependence on the U.S.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
For Antiwar.com, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Antiwar Radio.
And introducing our guest today, it's Michael Penn from the Shingetsu Institute.
He is on the phone from somewhere in Japan where it is very, very late at night.
Thank you for joining us on the show.
Michael, how are you?
Oh, I'm doing okay.
Well, I sure appreciate you joining us here.
I'm very interested in what's happened with the election over there, I guess.
In the parliament, they had a vote and a new party is coming to power for the first time in how long?
Well, yes, there was a general election and the new party is coming to power.
This is a big change.
For 54 years, the former party had been in control of the country, and this is sort of an earthquake in Japan, you might say.
All right.
Now, which parties are we dealing with here?
They're both called the Democrats of one kind or another, right?
Oh, yeah, that's correct.
The long-ruling party is called the Liberal Democratic Party, and by short, I'll probably sometimes call them the LDP.
And the party which is now going to be coming in this month is the Democratic Party of Japan, which goes by DPJ.
I see.
And now, so the Liberal Democratic Party, they were installed by MacArthur and they've ruled the whole time, or what?
Well, not exactly.
The American Occupation Authorities did work with the conservatives, and these politicians did not immediately form the Liberal Democratic Party of the LDP.
The LDP formed in 1954, which was a couple of years after the American Occupation had finished.
I see.
Well, I've read somewhere a reference to the LDP, the old party being basically created by the CIA or something, being not quite a legitimate homegrown Japanese party, at least at its inception.
Is that right?
Well, no, it was definitely a homegrown party.
And I should have said 1955 is when they formed, not 1954.
However, in the early years, they did apparently receive some funding from the CIA.
I read about that in the 1950s.
Definitely the United States was supporting the LDP over its rivals.
Well, it's a very interesting relationship, isn't it?
How America and Japan work together, because on one hand, America is an empire and we have massive numbers of troops stationed in Okinawa and I guess in other places in Japan, as far as I know, I don't know.
But at the same time, we have this neo-colonialism where we don't outright rule the place like the British ruled South Africa or whatever.
It's kind of more subtle than that, so that we can claim that, no, we're all just the best of friends and allies now, rather than one side is dominant over the other in the relationship.
But I wonder if you can kind of explain how that really does work, because, I mean, if you pull the people of Japan, they'd want our troops out of Okinawa, right?
And yet, they don't get that.
Yes, well, you're right.
I guess there's two issues you mentioned.
One is sort of the neo-colonialism issue, and one is how do Japanese feel about US troops in Japan.
In terms of, from a historian's perspective or a political analyst's perspective, certainly Japan has never been, since World War II, a 100% independent country.
It's always been fused somewhat with the American empire, as you put it.
And in foreign policy in particular, this comes through.
But in terms of domestic policy, the United States doesn't particularly interfere with too much, in terms of the governing of Japan.
Japan is more or less an independent country.
But in the diplomatic sphere, it's been less than 100% independent.
In terms of the attitude of Japanese people towards the US troops, well, I think they have kind of mixed feelings.
Certainly, they don't like the idea of living together with US troops, because they see them as kind of a source of crime and some problems like that.
However, most of the US troops, you don't see them in Japan, unless you happen to live in Okinawa.
Most of them are concentrated in that small part of the country, which is not really connected so directly to the mainland, or the main islands, I should say.
So, there's that aspect.
Right, so let me stop you there.
Okinawa is basically, you could even maybe argue that it was colonially occupied by the Japanese, but it isn't even necessarily considered part of the home islands, right?
Or it depends on your point of view there?
No, I think what you're saying is quite true.
Okinawa has quite a different history from the rest of Japan, and it should be considered differently.
And many people don't realize, but Japan only regained Okinawa in the early 1970s, so it remained under US occupation far longer than the rest of Japan.
Oh, I was just going to say, there is one other issue, and that's that most Japanese do sort of accept the idea that the United States is necessary to protect the country.
Because, you know, Japanese, at least until recent years, have been kind of skeptical of building up their own military power.
But at the same time, they do feel a certain degree of threat from North Korea, and in the long run, China.
So there is some acceptance of the US power, which just kind of balances against some of the tensions in the relationship.
I always wonder what that's like.
I see so many countries that, you know, like in Eastern Europe, I guess, would be a much more extreme example or whatever, but where basically the politicians, you know, almost outright say, hey, look, we're, you know, this piddly little country, and you big boys, Russia and America and whatever, you're going to decide, so we want to throw in our lot with these guys, or we want to throw in our lot with those.
And I mean, that must really be terrible, being a little country and having to just always choose which empire you're going to be a part of, which I guess is a relatively new situation for the Japanese.
But still, it's kind of humiliating, isn't it, to say rather than have our own military force to defend us from the North Koreans or the Chinese or whoever, that they have to rely on the USA?
Yes, this is an issue.
And in fact, you know, on both the left and the right in Japan, you know, there are those who argue that it is humiliating, and that, you know, from the point of view of self-respect, you know, they should do something about it.
But this point of view has remained on the margins on both left and right.
You know, the mainstream of Japanese, for the time being at least, have kind of been accepting of the arrangements as they've been so far.
Well, so what kind of changes can we expect from the, which was it again, the name of the new party?
The new party is the DPJ, the Democratic Party of Japan.
Right, right.
And so is there going to be much of a change at all in foreign policy, or is this mostly a domestic thing?
Well, I think there is going to be change, because what you have seen for these 54 years is that basically a right-wing party has been in control of the country.
And in recent years, especially since September 11th, it's even gone further to the right than it used to be, you know, during the Cold War years.
So I think that the new group that's coming in is not particularly liberal or left-wing, but they are kind of centrist, and they will have some more left-leaning elements.
And the key point is that sort of all of the changes that have been blocked up by the ruling party for many, many years, well, suddenly that sort of cork has been released, which means that many kind of long-overdue changes might happen in the next few years.
Well, I don't know.
We're all swallowing a very bitter pill of change over here in the United States.
I don't know how well you should get your hopes up if the Japanese model is anything like ours.
Well, actually, change is a key word here in Japan as well.
There was a mini-drama, a television mini-drama called Change, and I'm sure that you and your listeners have a certain attitude towards the Obama administration, but the image that is in Japan at the moment is a very positive one.
It's the idea that there's hope, that things can change.
This is still quite strong in Japan.
And actually, Obama's victory in the United States, I think, did have some effect on the Japanese public in the sense of saying, hey, look, it is possible to change governments, and it is possible to try something new.
So there is some connection, actually.
Well, now, in terms of the election, was there a big debate about foreign policy and Japanese involvement in helping in Afghanistan?
I guess the role in Iraq is over now, right?
Yes, correct.
The role in Iraq is over.
Generally speaking, I think it would be fair to say that the Japanese people do not really concern themselves too much about foreign policy issues, and this election very much turned on domestic issues, particularly issues of pensions and mismanagement of the economy by the old ruling party.
But that said, it is going to have an effect on foreign policy, even if that wasn't one of the focuses of the debate of the campaign.
I guess I'm surprised to hear that it's not much of a topic of debate during the election, that kind of thing.
I would have guessed, anyway, I guess, not based on much knowledge, that the people of Japan would be pretty concerned about what their military, what their government is up to in other people's countries.
Yes, actually, living here, I'm kind of surprised too, because I think there are very big changes that have happened in Japan in terms of foreign policy and the role that Japan plays in the international community.
But really, if you're at street level in Japan, there just is not so much concern about anything happening outside of Japan.
In the same way that you might say that Americans are quite absorbed by American culture and the American cocoon, well, the same is quite true of the Japanese.
They're very absorbed with Japanese culture and Japanese society.
Which is great, as long as their government stays home, right?
That's the problem.
There is some unease about Japan getting involved, especially in military ways, in foreign affairs.
And I do think that this was maybe down the list, number five or six on the number of things which the Japanese public was uneasy about the former government.
What's the media like over there?
Is there very diverse ownership and very diverse kind of voices in media?
Or is it all just a bunch of Fox News and NBC clones like it is here?
There's probably a little more diversity in Japan than there would be in the United States these days.
It's not sort of the same kind of corporations running everything.
But at the same time, they have press clubs and they have government regulations which do have a sort of homogenizing effect to some extent.
But on the whole, I would say the situation is probably a little bit better than the United States.
There's been a lot of controversy about the Status of Forces Agreement and the method in which American soldiers and Marines are punished or held to account whenever they rape or run somebody over or whatever on the roads there.
There's really no controversy about that in terms of electoral politics anyway?
Well, certainly it's a big issue in Okinawa.
But these kind of things that you hear about don't happen quite so often in the main islands.
Although I do recall one or two cases in Yokosuka, which is the Tokyo area that happened in the recent couple of years.
But no, it wasn't a big electoral issue.
But when you point to the SOFA, the Status of Forces Agreement, this is quite possibly going to be a big issue between the new government of Japan and the United States that may flare up in the next couple of months here.
Well, let's hope so.
I've got to tell you, I was really horrified reading Sorrows of Empire and Nemesis, The Last Days of the American Republic by Chalmers Johnson when he describes at length the relationship, if you want to call it that, between the American military and the people of Okinawa and all the, I guess, just continuous year after year after year taking more and more land from the people who were left there to expand the bases and then, of course, impunity when they commit crimes or gross negligence like car accidents, that kind of things.
It's just terrible.
Yes, it does offend.
I mean, the Japanese are sensitive to these points because long before the Status of Forces Agreement, back in the late 19th century, they dealt with unequal treaties of European powers.
So, you know, the Japanese have long been sensitive to these kinds of issues, of course, as anybody would be.
Right.
You know, I think people usually, when they hear ugly American, they picture Homer Simpson or something.
But I think most foreigners, most Americans picture, most foreigners, when they think ugly American, they picture a guy in camouflage with a machine gun in his hand and, you know, driving a Humvee at 70 miles an hour down their, you know, neighborhood street.
Yeah, well, certainly there's a lot of places in the world where that would be absolutely true.
I agree.
Yeah, well, there are a thousand places in the world where that would be true.
Something like that.
Yeah, I agree.
Well, so let me ask you about Japan's relationship with China and North Korea a bit there.
You made reference to, you know, at least, there's kind of an acceptance of American military power in Japan because of threats from China and North Korea.
What can you tell us about those relationships?
Are they getting better or worse?
Well, you know, first of all, there are two different subjects.
But if you want to talk about North Korea, the relationship between Japan and North Korea has been very, very bad, especially, you know, the last 10 years or so.
One of the major political issues in Japan, which was really taken advantage of by the Japanese conservatives in the right wing, was the issue of abductees.
And actually, the story is quite terrible.
I mean, North Korean agents, about 20 or 30 years ago, you know, abducted Japanese off the streets of their own country and took them to North Korea to serve as language teachers for spies and things like this.
And, you know, the families didn't know.
Just one day their family member disappeared and nobody knew what happened to them, that they had been abducted to North Korea.
And when this came out to the Japanese public in 2002, is when the story really broke, you know, the Japanese public was outraged.
And so since that time, this has been a huge issue about us accounting for all of the abductees that North Korea had taken in the 1980s.
And so this issue has really poisoned the relationship.
And of course, you know, I mean, North Korea now has the nuclear weapons and it's testing missiles and the Japanese feel a very direct threat from these sorts of things.
And so what about China?
Obviously, there's a pretty long and bloody history between China and Japan.
It's still China, obviously, still controlled by its Politburo, but it's not so much a communist country anymore.
I guess I like to think that trade between the two countries is the best thing for, you know, warming up that relationship over time.
I just saw where the Turks and the Armenians are opening up their border to trade.
And I thought, oh, happy day.
You know, here are people finally getting over some old history and moving forward into the brave new world and so forth.
Is that what's going on there?
Well, yes.
As I said, I think you should make a distinction between the North Korea case and the China case.
Because actually, you know, my analysis of the Japan-China relations in recent years is that most of the blame for what's going wrong in the relationship lies more on the Japanese side than it does on the Chinese side.
You know, the Japanese conservatives, they have kind of a very, how should I say, almost a discriminatory view towards Chinese in general.
And this really affects the diplomatic policy of Japan.
When Junichiro Koizumi was Prime Minister of Japan, he would visit Yasukuni Shrine, which, among other things, sort of celebrates people who were involved in war crimes during the last war.
So, I mean, World War II, the Pacific War.
So, obviously, this offended the sensitivity of most Asians, but particularly in China.
And he was very sort of stubborn in his approach to that.
And, you know, the Japanese didn't really care too much about Chinese feelings on this issue.
And so, you know, the fact that the relationship went downhill, I mean, I really should be blamed on the Japanese right more than what the Chinese had done.
But this is one part which may be good news.
This new party that's coming in, the DPJ, one of the big changes is that they're saying, look, China is our neighbor.
It's a big country.
It's a country that we should have a good relationship with.
And they're at least coming into office with the commitment and the real strong desire to improve Japan's relationships with Asia.
And by improving Japan's relationships with China, they hope to reduce some of their dependence on the United States.
Ah, yes, that multipolar world we keep hearing about.
Yes, they would like to see that multipolar world.
I think the new government coming in.
I'm talking with Michael Penn from the Shingetsu Institute.
Did I say that right?
That's correct.
The website is S-H-I-N-G-E-T-S-U Institute.
You can spell that yourself, dot com.
And I noticed here, I think, something.
No, I don't remember what it was.
Something on the front page there that I saw.
What did I see about?
Oh, it was on your Wikipedia page.
It was many different references to articles about oil politics.
Energy politics.
And obviously, I think probably most people know, Japan doesn't have any oil, right?
So they either, well, they buy it from somebody on the exchange in the Netherlands.
But what does this have to do with the politics of the Japanese government there?
Well, the Institute studies Japan's relationship with Islamic countries in general.
And of course, as everybody knows, a lot of the oil in the world is based in Islamic countries, especially the Persian Gulf area.
And the, yeah, you're right.
Japan is probably the most dependent on imported oil of any of the major industrial economies.
And about 80 to 85% of that is coming from the Persian Gulf.
So Japan's attempt to get oil and oil contracts with countries in that area is a major part of its energy policy.
And historically, there was a big event.
In 1973, there was the oil crisis.
And the OPEC oil crisis.
And in the OPEC oil crisis, Japan was basically told by OPEC at that time, that unless you have a diplomatic policy, which we find convenient, you're not going to be able to buy oil from us.
We're going to reduce your oil 5% a month until you begin to have a diplomatic policy that we can accept.
And this only happened at one time.
It was a sort of history kind of crossed at that one point it was possible.
But since that time, energy policy became a major concern of the Japanese government.
And so it's always been since that time something that the Japanese government has had as a major part of what they're interested in doing especially when dealing with the Persian Gulf countries.
Well, and now what effect did their cooperation with the so-called Coalition of the Willing in Iraq have on the rest of their relationship with other countries in the Muslim world?
Well, to some extent, of course, the only grievance that most Muslims would have about Japanese policy in recent years is when it does work closely with US efforts.
But that's not necessarily governments because most of the governments in that area are supporting the United States too because of their own pressures from the United States.
But if we're talking about the popular, on the street level or on the level of public opinion, of course, it has aggravated Japan's relationships with all these countries.
Directly in terms of oil policy, pressure from the United States forced the Japanese to abandon a major oil contract in Iran in 2006.
And now, actually, the Japanese are probably about to win a huge oil contract in Iraq, the news of which will probably come out later this month, the Nasiriyah oil field in southern Iraq.
Oh, really?
That's interesting.
Yes, actually, if this project goes across the world, according to plan, 10% of Japan's oil needs will be fulfilled by a major oil field in southern Iraq.
Ah, well, so maybe it was worth it after all, huh?
Well, actually, it's looking like Japan is coming out better than one would have expected a couple of years ago in terms of the Iraq issue.
Well, and probably better than America will at the end of the day.
All right, well, I've got to tell you, I really appreciate your time on the show today.
I know very little about Japan, and I wish I knew more, so I could have asked better questions, but what you say is very illuminating.
I really appreciate it.
Well, thank you, and I think an exciting time is coming for Japanese politics, so keep your eye on it.
Cool, well, and I hope we can stay in touch as further issues develop.
Absolutely.
All right, thanks.
Okay, bye-bye.
Everybody, that's Michael Penn from Penn Institute dot com.
