HOW HE SEES IT Japan risks isolating self from the rest of Asia

By DANIEL SNEIDER
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
Back during the Cold War, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone famously described his country's role as an "unsinkable aircraft carrier." In this crude metaphor, the deck was Japanese but the aircraft on it were American -- and the ship was aimed at the Soviet Union.
Nowadays, some in Tokyo hope to turn the aircraft carrier in a slightly different direction -- toward China. They are encouraged by those in Washington who see Japan as the anchor of a curtain of containment to be drawn around a rising Chinese superpower.
This is a dangerous idea. Rather than containing China, it risks isolating Japan from the rest of Asia. Japan, along with the United States, would find itself sitting offshore while China dominates the continent.
This was clear to me during a recent visit to South Korea, a visit that coincided with the surprising landslide victory of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and his conservative ruling party in parliamentary elections. In Washington, the victory brought applause, deservedly so. But in Korea, the reaction was almost uniformly negative.
Koreans see Koizumi as a dangerous nationalist who would lead Japan toward a revival of its militarist past. The oft-cited evidence for this is Koizumi's annual visits to Yasukuni, the controversial Shinto shrine to Japan's war dead, among them the leaders of wartime Japan. Korean commentators also point to plans to lift the American-imposed constitutional limits on Japan's military capability.
"A foreign policy that dismisses Asia and places supreme importance on the United States, an implacable line on visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, a zeal to amend Japan's pacifist postwar constitution -- all these have earned it the distrust of its neighbors," opined the conservative daily Chosun Ilbo after the election results came in.
These fears are in some ways even greater among Koreans who strongly support their own alliance with the United States. They worry the United States will rely too much on Japan, abandoning Korea to become part of a Chinese sphere of influence.
Emotional issue
Japan remains an emotional issue for Koreans. Bitter memories of Japan's 40 years of colonial rule are easily evoked. One old friend came close to tears recalling how she was forced to take a Japanese name, part of a policy of suppressing Korean identity.
The visits to Yasukuni are evidence that Japan is still trying to justify its World War II involvement, argued Gong Ro-myung, a former Korean ambassador to Tokyo. The shrine's museum, which portrays Japan as liberating Asia from Western imperialism and depicts it as a victim of American destruction, "is sickening," he told me.
Gong urged Koizumi to halt his Yasukuni pilgrimages. "There is a possibility that with such a strong mandate, Koizumi can carry out fence-mending," he said hopefully. "Or he can go ahead, no matter what China and Korea think about it. As long as he has such a close, supportive relationship with the Bush administration, he will go ahead."
Koizumi's stubborn insistence on going to Yasukuni is not helpful, but it is wrong to label him a right-wing nationalist. Rather he represents the emergence of a post-war generation in Japan that is eager to leave behind the shadows of the past. Koizumi's Japan is certainly more assertive but it hardly is a Japan content to be a passive base of American power in Asia.
Over-wrought fears
The desire to amend Article 9 of the Japanese constitution, which bars the use of military forces "as a means of settling international disputes," is not unreasonable. This language complicates even a role in U.N.-sanctioned peacekeeping operations. But the Chinese are happy to use this to play upon over-wrought fears of a revival of Japanese militarism.
Many Japanese are well aware of the danger of becoming isolated from the rest of Asia and a fierce debate is going on within Japan on this issue.
The United States needs to make it clear to the Japanese public -- and to the rest of Asia -- that our alliance is not an invitation to needlessly sharpen tensions in the region.
X Daniel Sneider, foreign affairs columnist of the San Jose Mercury News, is currently a Pantech Fellow at Stanford's Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.