Japan's rising nationalism enrages neighbors

By Jonathan Watts

TOKYO: An escalating row over a controversial Japanese history textbook has heightened Asian regional tensions and sharpened concerns about a rise in Japanese nationalism under popular Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

The charismatic leader is the subject of a virtual personality cult in his home country, where he enjoys support ratings of almost 90 percent and schoolgirls hang posters of him on their bedroom walls.

But Japan's neighbors have reacted with fury to Koizumi's right-wing policies, including a planned visit to a shrine honoring war criminals, moves to revise the country's pacifist constitution, and perceived approval of a revisionist view of the country's colonization of Asia.

Relations between Tokyo and governments in Beijing and Seoul are at their lowest point in years as a result of Japan's refusal to amend passages of a new secondary school textbook that opponents say glosses over Japanese aggression, in particular the atrocities carried out by the Imperial Army in the first half of the last century.

The book has been produced by a group of right-wing scholars who claim that Japan must move away from its "masochistic' view of history". When the book was initially approved this spring, South Korea's government demanded 35 changes to "problematic passages" in this and seven other textbooks. China insisted on eight more amendments.

Last Monday, however, Japan's government rejected all but two of the proposed changes -- both of which related to events that took place more than 1,000 years ago. Its decision was accompanied by a message by Koizumi intended to soften the blow. "Apart from such contentious issues, there are areas where we can co-operate more peacefully," he said. "There is a need to turn our eyes to those areas. It is not good to only look at points of contention."

But the announcement has served only to focus Asian worries about Japan's move to the right. A spokeswoman for China's Foreign Ministry, Zhang Qiyue, called on Japan to reverse its decision. "This so-called textbook, published by rightist forces, by turns beautifies and denies the Japanese militarists' aggressive foreign war. The Chinese cannot accept this," she said.

The reaction in South Korea, which was occupied by Japan from 1910 to 1945, was even more hostile. Demonstrators in Seoul have stormed the Japanese embassy, burnt Rising Sun flags and called for a ban on Japanese goods. Twin-town relationships have been abandoned, school visits to Japan canceled and legislators have proposed a motion to block support for Japanese membership of the United Nations Security Council.

Such is the mood of hostility that organizers of next year's World Cup finals, to be co-hosted by Japan and South Korea, warn that the event could be undermined.

The row is an embarrassment to South Korea's President Kim Dae-jung, last year's Nobel peace prize laureate, who has gone further than any of the country's previous leaders in attempting a reconciliation with Japan.

He expressed shock at Japan's decision and introduced punitive measures, including canceling high level visits to and from Tokyo and refusing entry to a Japanese naval ship at the port of Inchon.

Despite the strains upon relations, Koizumi's next move will be anything but conciliatory. On Aug. 15, the anniversary of the end of the World War II, he plans to become the first Japanese Prime Minister for more than a decade to visit the Yasukuni shrine, the symbolic home of Japanese nationalism.

More than 2.5 million war casualties are enshrined at Yasukuni, along with seven Class A war criminals, including Gen. Hideki Tojo who was executed by the Allies for launching the attack on Pearl Harbor and leading Japan into war. On the anniversary every year, thousands of war veterans pay their respects to the dead along with several paramilitary groups, yakuza gangsters and right-wing politicians.

No Japanese Prime Minister has dared to go to the Shinto shrine in an official capacity, for fear of upsetting the country's neighbors, since Yasuhiro Nakasone's visit to it in 1988. Nakasone is one of Koizumi's biggest supporters, along with the right wing Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara.

If Koizumi carries out his declared intention to attend, the anger in Seoul and Beijing will hit a new pitch, but the planned move appears to have gone down well with domestic voters ahead of an upper house election on July 26. Voters have flocked to support their tough talking Prime Minister, who has promised painful economic reforms and a more assertive foreign policy.

This nationalist mood appears to be a response to economic stagnation and an influx of Western companies and culture rather than a drift back towards the militarism of the 1930 and 1940s. But even Koizumi's coalition allies are uneasy about where his move to the right will take Japan.

The administration of United States President George Bush wants Tokyo to go further. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who heads policy towards Japan -- America's most important global ally -- has called for Tokyo to take on more of the security burden in Asia to counterbalance growing Chinese power. At some point that would mean revising the constitution, which renounces war.

Koizumi backs such a move, although it is likely to take years. With the U.S. increasingly at odds with Beijing, the signs are that growing Japanese nationalism will only add to a new Cold War polarization in Asia.

-- Observer News Service