The puzzle of Japan Prime Minister Koizumi

SINGAPORE: When Junichiro Koizumi became Japan's Prime Minister a month ago, much of the world was impressed with his reformist zeal. At long last, they thought, Japan has a leader intelligent enough to know what was wrong with the country and courageous enough to want to fix it. His first speeches as Prime Minister, calling for "structural reforms with no sacred cow" and warning that there is "no gain without pain" confirmed the favorable impressions.

Since then, however, his attention seems to have wavered. Instead of detailing how he intends to go about restructuring banks or restraining government spending, he has spent the past couple of weeks urging constitutional reform. One of the reforms he is advocating -- allowing the direct election of a Prime Minister -- may well make sense.

But the other reform he advocates -- amending the Constitution's famous Article 9 which states that the country will "forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation" -- has puzzled Japanese and flummoxed the country's neighbors. Why would he want to do this? How would Japan benefit from this change?

As it is currently interpreted, Article 9 does not prevent Japan from defending itself. Its military is called the Self- Defense Force (SDF), but that does not mean it is not effective. Nor has Article 9 prevented Japan from establishing an effective alliance with the United States.

Indeed, only two years ago, the Japanese Diet was able to pass new guidelines for U.S.-Japan defense cooperation which allowed the SDF to provide U.S. forces with rear-area logistical support in conflicts beyond Japan's borders. Even if Japan were to decide that it should undertake a larger share of the alliance's burden -- as U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has urged -- it is difficult to see how changing Article 9 would serve to accomplish that end. The same result could just as easily be accomplished if the guidelines for U.S.-Japan defense cooperation were amended further to set out clearly Japan's obligations in a variety of circumstances, both in its own defense as well as in regional security.

Revoking Article 9 on the dubious grounds that it somehow diminishes Japan's ability to defend itself or fulfill its treaty obligations to the United States will only add to the suspicions of its neighbors and destabilize the region further. That might not have been the case if Japan, like Germany, had done more over the years to come to terms with its war guilt, but the fact is, it has not, as its neighbors and former victims are well aware.

Koizumi should take the region's sensitivities into account before he upsets a constitutionally-mandated arrangement that has served his country and the region so well for more than 50 years. As the 74 percent of the Japanese public who oppose revising the clause recognize, many things in Japan need to be reformed, but Article 9 is not among them.

Some Japanese newspapers have speculated that Koizumi himself recognizes this fact, and is only talking up constitutional reforms because he has to mollify the conservatives in his party who oppose his economic agenda. Diverting attention to the Constitution or stoking up nationalist sentiments by visiting the Yasukuni Shrine honoring Japan's war dead (as Koizumi proposes to do in August) may just be a sop to lull his political opponents before he spells out the painful economic changes he wants to implement.

If this is so, it is somewhat reassuring, but hardly comforting. History shows that it is difficult to bottle the nationalist genie once it is released.

-- The Straits Times/Asia News Network