The Pathology of Japanese Neo-Militarism

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The Japan Syndrome: The Pathology of Japanese Neo-Militarism

Post Categories: Asia

Dr. Christof Lehmann | Monday, January 14, 2013, 14:03 Beijing

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In 2012 and even more so after last months land slide election victory of the LPD and prime Minister Abe, Japan has embarked on a militant nationalist path that causes Japan´s neighbors as well as analysts world-wide to raise red flags.

Japan seems to have embarked on a path which could be described as narcissistic. It is a path that is dangerous for regional and international stability and security and it is not least dangerous for the people of Japan.

Backed by the very United States which have brought the yet greatest disaster that has ever been brought upon the people of Japan, the government of Prime Minister Abe has deployed F-15 fighter jets to patrol the disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, permitting ”warning shots” with life ammunition to be fired toward Chinese aerial surveillance planes.

There is something about the recent resurgence of Japanese militarism that almost seems pathological or at least very confused.

To elicit the point; Just consider the 2012 visit of US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and his visit to the Bakunin Shrine which houses honorary plates for at least fourteen Japanese war criminals who were responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians.

The fact that a Japanese government invites foreign dignitaries to the Yasukuni Shrine is bound to bring up memories about the 1937 massacre in Nanjing, China, where an estimated 200.000 Chinese civilians were massacred and more than 20.000 Chinese women raped.; Thousands of them were raped to death.

Nanjing, where two of the Generals who are honored at the Yasukuni Shrine entered into a competition about who would be the fastest to behead a row of hundred helpless civilians; war heroes are commemorated, who restarted the competition after having beheaded duzins because one of the two ”war heroes” complained that the competition was ”unfair because his sword was not properly sharpened”.

Inviting US Secretary of Defense to the Yasukuni Shine caused, to no great surprise, the protests and not least gravest concerns in China and among other of Japan´s neighbors.

What has not been discussed however, is the question which deficiency in the psyche of those who are trying to sell a revamp of Japan´s military glory, might and sovereignty might cause a person like Prime Minister Abe to assume that the rediscovered militarism and national pride is compatible with taking dictates from a purported ”ally” who has murdered tens of thousands of Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an ally who is now using Japan as a forward base against China, an ally who could not possibly care less how many millions of Japanese would have to be sacrificed to serve the agenda of global, full-spectrum dominance.

It may well be that  Shinzo Abe is telling the people of Japan that they proudly can sing the Kimigayo in praise of the Emperor. Regardless whether he believes in his own encouragements and policies or not, the operand question is whether he has access to sufficiently skilled Spin Doctors so that the people of Japan don´t recognize that the Kimigayo is now being sung to the tune of the Star-sprangled Banner.

If Prime Minister Abe is taking himself and his policy seriously rather than just selling militarist propaganda, the words ”The Emperors New Clothes” and ”Narcissism” come to mind.

Its somewhat Dantesque – a divine comedy rather than divine wind, although the comparison of  Abe´s militant pseudo-nationalism with the Kamikaze pilots of world war two is not too far fetched either.

The downside of the comedy, regardless whether we chose Dante, kamikaze or both, is that narcissism would make a new Japanese militarism even more dangerous. It would after all be comforting to know that someone sane makes decisions which potentially could trigger a war with China, Taiwan or other neighbors.

Prime Minister Abe and regional peace and stability would be well served if he took on a sailing holiday. A vacation along the coastal villages of the region. Japanese, Taiwanese and Chinese fishermen would tell him that they have been fishing together, peacefully, at the Diaoyu or Senkaku Islands for centuries.

And that in spite of the fact that the Islands have appeared on Chinese maps as sovereign Chinese territory since the Ming Dynasty.

I would feel much more secure and confident in peace and stability if the people of Japan would elect a fisherman, and a real one, not one who has his ”fishing industry” financed by globalists.

Prime Minister Abe´s fishing for votes based on a psycho-pathological and self-conflicting militarism and the illusion of national sovereignty which is based on support from the nation which has incinerated two entire Japanese cities makes me feel much more concerned than the idea of a fisherman at the helm of the Island Nation.

Dr. Christof Lehmann who is one of the frequent contributors for The 4th Media is the Founder and Chief Editor for the nsnbc.

http://nsnbc.me/2013/01/13/the-japan-syndrome-the-pathology-of-japanese-neo-militarism/

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February 23, 2006

Washington Gives the Green Light
Japan's Neo-Militarists

By CHRISTOPHER REED
J apan is marching back to military power, or more precisely, "is being marched" by the United States toward a new militarism, as its neo-nationalist prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, who like many hawks has never served in the military, acts as eager drill sergeant.   Meanwhile the putative army, the Japanese people, remains unenthusiastic.

The nation and its population are unique in the world, having honored 60 years of official pacifism since their disastrous imperialist wars from 1931-45. These ended in defeat with three million Japanese dead, and a US occupation force writing a new constitution that renounced war "forever."   That was then.   Now, despite opinion polls still showing a pacifist public in the high 60s percentage, Japan's warmongers exert their influence.   The new militarism is not trumpeted, even the Pentagon's drums are muffled, but almost every week an event occurs to push six decades of peace further into history.

In January, for instance, the Ground Self-Defense Force, the name Japan must give its well-equipped and powerful army, was for the first time ever exercising jointly with US military for three weeks at the giant Pendleton Marine base in southern California, north of San Diego, staging amphibian operations against an "armed guerrilla occupation" of Japanese islands.

Why?

It so happens that a nasty dispute exists between Japan, China, and Taiwan, over five desolate little outcrops in the East China Sea the Japanese call Senkaku, from the original British-named Pinnacle Rocks, and the Chinese, Diaoyu islands.

Controlled by Japan since its 1895 annexation of Taiwan (an earlier Japanese imperialist adventure), both the People's Republic and Taiwan now claim the isles for a predictable reason.

Oil deposits lie around a "median line" drawn by Japan, which has already protested drilling on the Chinese side.

Fishing rights are disputed too, and Taiwan dispatched a frigate last June as Japanese patrol boats harassed Chinese vessels.

Yet it's hardly guerrilla territory.   Occasional Chinese protesters have landed, to be promptly ousted by Japanese coastguards.   Amphibious commando ops — as well as Tokyo's development of new shallow-water torpedoes — pose a graver threat, from Japan.   Presumably that is the combative point to be taken.

Japanese militarism reviving

Posted on January 10, 2013 by petrel41

 

 

 

 

 

 

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This video about 1930s Japanese army war crimes is called Rape of Nanking Part I. Atrocities in Asia Nanjing Massacre.

And here is Part II.

From daily News Line in Britain:

Thursday, 10 January 2013

JAPAN BOOSTS ITS MILITARY SPENDING

WHILE the US and the UK have reduced their military spending, under pressure from the greatest ever crisis of the capitalist system, the new Japanese Liberal Democratic government has just announced that Japanese imperialism is back – by pledging to increase its military spending by $2.1 bn this New Year.

Japan’s defence ministry says it is seeking more funds for military spending, a day after news the government would boost the defence budget for the first time in 10 years, to be spent on missile interceptors and fighter jets.

This is not bad going for a state that signed a surrender agreement to US and UK imperialism in 1945, and a treaty which stipulated that Japan would not have any military forces at all ever again.

The US dictated constitution of 1947 reads in Article 9: ‘Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognised.’

The US and the UK ruling classes were determined that Japanese militarism would never rise again, it seemed.

However, the victory of the Chinese revolution in 1948, the Korean war and the emergence of North Korea, changed all that, with the US and the UK deciding that, not the end, but the rebirth of Japanese militarism was what was required, in the face of the ‘communist menace’.

Japan has re-built its massive modern industries and although in a slump, has now powerful military forces on land, sea and the air, and the capacity to produce nuclear weapons as it likes.

It is now also the main ally of US imperialism in Asia and perhaps the world. The US has tens of thousands of troops, on the land, in the air and on the seas of Japan, much of it nuclear armed, as a result of the 1960-Japan-US security agreement. Japan has become a giant base and aircraft carrier for the United States.

In the wake of the announcement by President Obama that the US’ major military forces are being shifted to the seas and the countries around China, the announcement that Japan has a ‘stimulus package’ for its armed forces has great importance.

This new funding is in addition to news, on Tuesday, that the new government, which won elections in December, would increase the defence budget request by more than 100bn yen. The defence budget for the year ending in March 2012 stood at 4.65 trillion yen.

The resurgent Japanese ruling class is using claims on islands in the China Seas, believed to be floating on oil fields to stoke up tensions with China.

In return, China has pushed to claim the East China Sea islands as its own. Japan controls the islands but its purchase of three of them from their private Japanese owner in September sparked a renewed row.

Since then Chinese ships have been sailing in and out of what Japan says are its territorial waters around the islands, prompting warnings from Tokyo.

New Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has pledged a strong stance on the territorial issue, while announcing that he intends to visit the Yasukune cemetery, where General Tojo is buried along with other Japanese military leaders from the second world war, who were executed by the US and UK as war criminals.

Besides being a war memorial, Yasukune is dedicated to the Shinto code of bushido, with its absolute obedience to the emperor. This state Shintoism was at the heart of Japan’s fiery nationalism, the antecedent of its incursions into Asia, and, ultimately, its attack on Pearl Harbour.

Abe summoned the Chinese ambassador to protest against the presence of Chinese government ships in waters around the disputed islands, while there were anti-Japanese riots in China on the anniversary of the ‘rape of Nanking’, when many thousands of Chinese were massacred by the Japanese military using the bayonet as the weapon of choice.

The pot is now well and truly boiling, with the US considering whether a testing out of China’s defence capacity by Japanese military forces would not be too bad an idea in the period ahead, at the same time as it is heaping pressure onto Iran.

However the peoples of China, and south east Asia, having overthrown the rule of imperialist puppets will not allow the revival of Japanese militarism, even arm in arm with the USA.

Nor only that but the Japanese working class and the youth want no part in any revival of the vision of the Japanese ruling class that it will dominate the Asia Pacific, whether with the agreement of the US or not.

Related articles

• Japan plans extra US$2.1b on military spending – Channel News Asia (channelnewsasia.com)
• China and Japan step up drone race as tension builds over disputed islands (guardian.co.uk)
• Japan eyes military spend boost (bbc.co.uk)
• Japanese prime minister sings national anthem, seen by critics as symbol of past militarism – @Reuters (worldnews.nbcnews.com)
• Japan to boost military budget amid regional tensions (csmonitor.com)

http://dearkitty1.wordpress.com/2013/01/10/japanese-militarism-reviving/