Japan Not Rearming, Despite Troops To Iraq

by Andrew Lam

For one thing, the recent bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad may have given Tokyo cold feet about sending troops. Even before the blast, a poll showed that more than half of the Japanese population opposed the deployment of Japanese troops, even for the purpose of peacekeeping. If a Japanese envoy who is currently in Iraq finds that Japanese troops would be put in harm's way, Tokyo is likely to disappoint Washington by withdrawing its offer.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was recently re-elected, but the issue of Iraq was skirted during the campaign. It will likely again be submerged, since sending troops to Iraq could cause a severe backlash among voters during the fall Lower House election.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the Japanese are staunchly averse to war. Since World War II the 240,000-strong Japanese army has not fired a shot in combat. The Japanese Constitution has a "no war" clause. Despite increases in defense appropriations over the years, the no-war clause remains an important brake to a military buildup.

"The bitter anti-militarism and enthusiastic pacifism of the Japanese," observed the late U.S. ambassador to Japan, Edwin O. Reischaeur in his book "The Japanese Today, Change and Continuity," "were largely an emotional reaction to the horror of (World War II) and the tribulations it had brought them, but gradually these attitudes became a matter of rational conviction as well."

If anything, that conviction seems to have found new fervor today. Protests against the U.S. invasion of Iraq erupted in several Japanese cities. A nationwide poll by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper showed that 80 percent of Japanese were dead set against the U.S. invasion.

Rev. Hideotoshi Watanabe, 67, has been a pacifist since the end of World War II. The son of a Japanese policeman in Korea during the Japanese occupation of that country, Watenabe says he saw "enough oppression and atrocities as the result of Japan's expansionist conquest" that he decided to commit himself to peace. "These days I carry an umbrella. It says 'Push Bush back.'"

Yet Watanabe and other Japanese are quite aware that their umbrellas aren't enough to get them out of America's sphere of influence. The Japanese have a shared sentiment that Japan can't wiggle away from the grip of the world's sole superpower and that the United States is strong-arming their country into sending troops to the Middle East. The United States, after all, is Japan's only protector in case of a war with China or North Korea.

This is why Prime Minister Koizumi expressed full support for the U.S. military action in Iraq. While acknowledging the overwhelming opposition to the war in Japan, he claimed he made the decision with his nation's interests at heart.

Renewed fears of North Korea's missile buildup, including the firing of a missile over Japanese airspace, have spurred a vocal minority to push for nuclear armament. These hawks, however, are small in number. A poll by the National Institute for Research Advancement (NIRA) shows that only 7 percent of the general public support nuclear armament.

Takeshi Kawasaki, a writer for Asahi Shimbun, calls nuclear weapons impractical. "If Tokyo gets hit, that's the end of Japan. There is no need for retaliation. Sure, there is a tiny element in Japan that advocates nuclear weapons, but it's all very unrealistic," he says. "The capability is there, we have the technology and plutonium to go nuclear within six months. But the question is political will."

That will hasn't existed since Japan's defeat in World War II and is unlikely to return any time soon. Thanks to the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there is deep-seated aversion to nuclear armaments. Japanese scientists, says Kawasaki, will resist nuclear weapons production.

The expansionist, war-loving Japan no longer exists, says Koike Kazuo, a history professor and author of the famous manga (Japanese comic book) series "Lonewolf and Cub," a samurai epic. "Japanese no longer have the warrior spirit. There is not a single Japanese left who understands the bushido-samurai ethos," the professor says.