The Senkaku Invasion, Considered

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Over at the The Atlantic, CFR Fellow Sheila Smith has had published a revised version (E) of her August 15 Asia Unbound post on the bang-your-head on the desk pig-headeness displayed on the anniversary of the worst wars.

I would only quibble with her characterization in the revised article of the Taiwaness attitude toward Japanese territories. Despite one of the activists making it to shore carrying a Republic of China flag, the Taiwanese attitude seems to be "Leave us out of this!" Not only did Taiwan authorities not allow the Hong Kong ship make port at Taichung to take on fresh water but it convinced Taiwan activists preparing to join the crew of the Hong Kong vessel that it was really in their best interests to stay home.

Furthermore, in a little noticed near incident on July 26, a Taiwanese squadron of three naval vessels sailed close to the 12 nautical mile limit surrounding the island of Yonaguni. In respone to sailing so close to Japanese territorial waters, the Taiwanese Navy went bonkers, relieving the commanding officer of his command and affixeing a demerit to his service record. Since then the committee in charge of the defending the rights of naval personnel has seen to it that the demerit will be revoked. (E)

The Taiwanese Navy's immediate and near hysterical response to even appearing to desire to violate Japan's territorial waters seems to demonstrate that government of Taiwan has a sent word on down that the basic rule is restrict territorial grandstanding to talk, not action.

Over at Global Talk 21, Okumura Jun has been dashing out a series of invaluable posts on the Senkakus landing incident. Okumura-san hammers away at the takeaway from the landing: that by carrying out maneuvers that resulted in significant damage to Japan Coast Guard vessels, but making no attempts to board the vessel -- even after the activists tossed cement blocks at the JCG ships -- and by having the arrests carried out on land as gently as possible by local -- i.e. Okinawa Prefecture -- police specially transported to the Senkakus for the occasion, Japanese claims of sovereignty of the islands have been enhanced. This was absolutely the worst possible outcome for the People's Republic of China, no matter how much it has thrilled some in Hong Kong. (E)

One ongoing domestic dispute perplexes Okumura, however:

"...there seems to be significant criticism in Japan over the fact that the authorities let the Hong Kong activists land on the Islands. I don’t understand this; are the critics suggesting that the authorities should have exercised deadly force if need be rather than let the activists land, then arrest them for illegal entry? After all, they were posing no known physical threat to any persons or assets under Japanese jurisdiction. If this had been a helicopter and not a boat, would these critics have insisted that the Coast Guard shoot it down?"

Yes, that is exactly what they are saying. You know, the old "If it was good enough for the Soviet Union (E) it is good enough for us" line of reasoning.

I am stunned. Members of the opposition, playing politics with the government's conduct of Japan's security policy, in direct contradiction to positions they have previously taken.

Where oh where could they have ever learned that little trick?

This is not to say that Ozawa Ichiro would be acting as the LDP is in this instance. Indeed, he would not. However, the LDP, with its "Learn nothing; forget nothing" ethos, is only doing what it thinks an opposition party should do: play "tit-for-tat" -- do unto others as they have done unto you -- no matter that that what they are advocating is intensely and unpatriotically stupid.

Now such stupendous nitwittery has its uses, of course. It certainly makes it easier for the Noda government to lay it on the line with with the Chinese, telling them:

"Look, keep a lid on this, OK? Do not let your self-appointed, presumably sexually frustrated middle-aged male hyper-patriots make us look bad. Because if the DPJ gets wiped out in the next election as a result of its supposed weak stance on national security, you will be dealing with this cabal of nitwits."

It Could Have Been A Lot Worse

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, In yesterday's post, I lamented that the August 15 anniversary of the end of World War II was the worst of days, due to the absurd nationalist and ehtnocentric emotions the anniversary raises.

However, we have made it through to Thursday, Amaterasu be praised. A lot of bad, stupid events took place and dumb things were said, but all turned out pretty much for the best.

- The fishing boat full of Hong Kong activists, despite the Japan Coast Guard's vigorous efforts to encourage -- and by "encourage" I mean this...

to not try to make landfall at any of the Senkaku Islands, could not take the subtle hint and proceeded close enough to the shore of Uojima for seven of the activists, carrying inexplicably the flags of both the PRC and the ROC, to wade ashore.

CCTV, in a breaking news flash, depressingly referred to the charade as a "successful landing."

On shore, the seven were met by a company of JCG personnel and Okinawa Prefecture police -- a blend of security forces the activists should have thanked their lucky stars for, as coast guard personnel tend to play rough. They are the proud cowboys of Japan's security establishment and have a very short list of rules of engagement.

Despite the reduced chance of their being harmed, two of the activists turned around and immediately swam back to the boat. Perhaps they lost heart; perhaps they had a live interview wairing for them. The remaining five were relieved of their flags and arrested on violations of immigration laws.

Later, after night had fallen, the Coast Guard took control of the fishing vessel, arresting the nine remaining activists on board.

No one got hurt; the Chinese got their testosterone shot. If Japanese authorities learned anything from the Chinese fishing boat collision case, they will put the activists on a flight to Hong Kong, deporting them for being particularly unsuccessful illegal immigrants.

- President Lee Myung-bak, who threw a wrench into Japan-South Korea relations by visiting Dokdo on August 10, doubled down on his diplomatic faux pas by inviting the Heisei Emperor to visit South Korea on the condition that the emperor issue a contrite apology to the peoples of the Korean peninsula for Japan's occupation and annexation of the land a hundred years ago (E). That the Emperor did this the last time he visited the ROK Prime Minister Kan Naoto did this on the 100th anniversary of Korea's annexation seems to have not satisfied President Lee's critics.

For a guy born in Osaka, Lee sure is tough on his original home. Then again, for the suspicious act of having emerged from a uterus in Japan, the president of the Republic of Korea is a presumed puppet of Japan.

Lesson: choose your uterus wisely!

[Choosing the right uterus is only half the story, of course, even in these oligarchical times. The Hatoyama Brothers, Yukio and Kunio, made an excellent choice, only to proceed through their own particular brand of solipsism to make a hash of their advance placement in life.]

- The demonstration in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul attracted 300 persons, according to Japanese news reports. In the pouring rain, the famous statue of the young seated girl looked as though she were crying,

While particularly a effective and affective work of art yesterday, the statue has to be moved to a less provocative location. It is, of course, a stand-in for the sex slaves themselves, who cannot, due to their advanced age, keep up the weekly protests much longer.

However, the statue, in its permanence, closes minds. From the point of view of a Japanese diplomat or a Japanese politician, the statement "We will always be here" provokes the response, "Fine. We will always ignore you."

- The two members of the Cabinet who paid their respects at Yasukuni yesterday did so in a private capacity, as they had promised, lessening somewhat the fallout from the visits. They also demonstrated, in their press availabilities after their visits, that neither would make it past the first round of an "evil genius" competition.

- After reporting on the rest of the day's sordid events, NHK's 9 p.m. broadcast a special segment on a heretofore little-publicized facet of the Pacific War: the dispatch of eleven agents from the infamous Nakano military intelligence school to the outer, tiny islands of the Okinawa chain in last year of the war. The goal: to infiltrate local society in preparation of convincing the islanders to sacrifice themselves for the defense of the main islands.

The piece focused on the effort of two sisters to record, as long as persons of at least a certain age in 1945 are still alive, memories of a school teacher who arrived in January 1945 and soon became renowned for his kindness and competence.

The school teacher, was, as it turned out, one of these agents.

When Allied forces arrived near the island, the teacher was one of the local authorities who convinced islanders to retreat in to the forests. Once in the forest, the teacher, who had heretofore been known only for his sweet disposition, suddenly began talking about everyone preparing for a glorious death in battle (gyokusai - literally "a crushing of a jewel"). The islanders, in their good sense, thought he had gone insane and ignored him.

Some time later, after the war was over, Allied intelligence found the agent still at work on the island, arrested him, and took him away.

It was the last anyone on the island saw of him.

Now for the sisters, the recording of the activities of the agent, who went on to live a life of obscure normalcy as a middle school teacher on Honshu, has a deeply personal cast. While on the island, the teacher started living with a local woman, impregnating her. She later gave birth to a son.

That woman was the sisters' aunt and the boy their cousin.

The message repeated throughout the piece was the way the leadership in Tokyo considered the inhabitants of Okinawa expendable (sute ishi - "stones tossed away"). Their value. at least as regards the male inhabitants, was as a potential guerrilla force tying down the Allies, inflicting casualties, and slowing the Allied advance as the main islands prepared to repel an amphibious invasion.

Insufficient reflection on the wrongs done in the war, both on the small and the vast scales?

Not exactly.

Photo image credit: Yomiuri Online

As Regards The Senkakus Dispute

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, This is more a ransom set of notes than a post.

The driver behind the current bizarre conflict between Ishihara Shintaro and the central government over who will purchase three Senkaku Islands from their Saitama-based private owner is the March expiration of the latest lease.  A private purchase such as the one Ishihara is trying to arrange cannot be done without land surveys.  The central government, the current leasee, will not allow Ishihara's survey teams land on the islands, even though the owner wants to sell the islands to the Tokyo Metropolitan District. (E)

The central government's prososal to nationalize the three islands, and indeed the Ishihara-proposed TMD purchase, violate the fundamental principle of Northeast Asian peace: do not try to solve anything.  No matter how twisted, frustrating and dangerous a situation, the cardinal rule is "Don't touch it"--  as any attempt to rationalize a situation instigates nationalist explosions.

Michael Auslin has recently published an opinion article on the Senkakus, "Japan Feels a North Asia Squeeze" and Stephen Harner has blogged on the subject "The Japan-China Territorial Dispute is Serious, and Escalating."

Both authors make claims that do not stand up to scrutiny.

Auslin claims that declining U.S. power projection in Northeast Asia has left Japan vulnerable to pressure from China and Russia, and that if Japan should walk back from a hardline stand now, that its neighbors will make even more demands of Japan.

First, the recent visits by the president, now prime minister Dmitry Medvedev to the Northern Territories do not represent an escalation of demands on Japan.  Russia has effective control of the Northern Territories and has had it since 1945.  What Medvedev's visits have tried to do is whip up a fear of a military reconquest of the Northern Territories by Japan's Self Defense Forces.  Making such an absurd claim is a measure of the Putin government's desperation to simultaneously justify Russia's current borders and to bolster an expansive Russian identity.

As for China's putting a squeeze on Japan, it is due to China's expanding military reach, which no one, not even the Obama Administration and its pivot to East Asia, can do anything about.  While China's PLA Navy is not directly involved in the current provocative actions in and around the Senkakus, the PLAN is the big stick looming behind the increasingly bold tests of the Japan Coast Guard's resolve to halt unapproved fishing in the area and the swings through the contested zone by Chinese fisheries vessels ostensibly keeping tab on the actions of China-based fishermen.

Mr. Harper's post contains the claim that:

Japan seems compelled to force the issue with China, while China would very likely be satisfied to live with the status quo, as long as Japan would acknowledge that it too has a claim on the islands and surrounding area.

While the first part of that statement is true -- that the government of Japan feels compelled to force the issue with China, due to the imminent danger of a radical nationalist coming into at least nominal control of the islands (and achieveing the ability, should the procedures of the past be followed, to extort extraordinary rent from the central government at the time of the renewal of the annual lease) -- the remainder of the sentence is poppycock.

First, China is an outlier of the 21st century.  It is the only country in the world seeking to reestablish the imperial reach it possessed at the zenith of its power at the beginning of the 19th century.  Every one of the rest of the world's imperial powers has receded, even the United States, which despite its messianic missions of the last few years, has no capacity or desire to hold on to the countries its troops have invaded and occupied (one can argue that the expansion of NATO is a soft form of imperialism but since participation in that organization is voluntary the argument does not hold water).  That the government of China should be seeking to nail down ownership of the lion's (tiger's?) share of the South China, East China and Yellow Seas, as well as obliterate the ancient semi-independent Uighur khanates and the Tibetan kingdom, demonstrate an anachronistic national purpose, based on a spurious "humiliation" of China from the Opium Wars onward (You want to talk about national humiliation? As the British and the French about the Suez Crisis).

Second, how can Japan admits that China has a claim on the islands and surrounding areas?  It would lose all ability to claim legitimate control of the Senkakus.  China does not accept Japanese claims on the islands and surrounding areas, for precisely the same reason.

Mi casa es su casa?  Not if you want it to remain mi casa for very long.

The Chinese Fishing Boat Captain Slips Through The Net Again

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, So much for all that.

The other day I had a post on the Committees for the Inquest of the Prosecution, the liberalization of indictment procedures intended to serve as a backup route for citizens to bring to justice politicians and power brokers prosecutors found too intimidating to challenge. Unfortunately, the Committees have morphed into tools for conspiracy theorists and self-righteous vigilanteism.

Except in the post I praised the decision of the Naha Committee for the Inquest of the Prosecution to indict the Chinese fishing boat captain who rammed two Japan Coast vessels patrolling the waters off the Senkaku Islets in September 2010. The captain was arrested on charges of interfering with officers of the Government of Japan carrying out their duties -- which any sane person would admit he did. The Naha Prosecutors Office, however, after receiving the captain from the Coast Guard, dropped all charges against him on the peculiar, extra-legal excuse that the arrest had become an international incident.

"So what does that have to do with anything? That the arrest is becoming an international incident is Kasumigaseki's problem, not yours," was the response from the public -- which saw the release as the result of base and craven (no one in Tokyo would admit to having pressured the Naha prosecutors) political meddling in the judicial process.

For once, it seemed, a Committee for the Inquest of the Prosecution was going to perform the function for which it had been created: indicting and bringing to trial someone the prosecutors would not touch due to their spinelessness.

Indict him they did and bring him to trial they did -- but that is the end of the story. Last Thursday the presiding judge Suzuki Hideyuki revoked the right to prosecute (koso gikyaku) in the case, ending the trial.

The judge's action came after the three court-appointed lawyers failed to deliver a letter of indictment to the ship's captain within the requisite 60 days after they filed their mandated indictment (kyosei kiso) on March 15, 2012. The lawyers had until midnight, May 16 to provide the court with proof the indictment had been delivered. (J)

That they failed to complete their task in the allotted time should surprise no one. Under the Treaty between Japan and the People's Republic of China on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters (2007) indictments handed down in Japanese courts are sent to the Homusho (Ministry of Justice) which then forwards them to its counterpart in China, the Zhongguo Renmin Gongheguo Shifabu.

Funny thing happened to that Naha District Court letter of indictment, or did not happen, as the case might be. The Zhongguo Renmin Gongheguo Shifabu seems to have not forwarded the letter to local authorities to serve to the captain. Indeed, just to demonstrate that tough-minded justice ministry bureaucrats that they may be, those working at the Zhongguo Renmin Gongheguo Shifabu are not without a sense of humor, they waited, according to the Sankei Shimbun, until May 15, the day before the expiration date of the letter of indictment, to send a message to Ministry of Justice of Japan that:

"As the Senkakus Islets (sic) are our national territory, we cannot accept applications made by the judiciary of Japan." (J)*

The Sankei Shimbun is understandably up in arms about these developments. It demands to know why Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko did not bring up the matter of the non-delivery of the letter of indictment when he met with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on May 13.

Gosh, why would he not bring the matter up? Why would that be? Can anyone think of a reason? Or any number of reasons?

So the case -- which had the potential of becoming a major irritant in the bilateral relationship -- ends not with bang, but with a snigger.



Later - This post has been edited for clarity.

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* The Sankei Shimbun commits a howling error here. There is no way that the PRC Ministry of Justice would refer to the islands in question as the Senkaku shoto.