Paris, September 1, 2009 – The landslide election of Japan’s
Democratic Party in last weekend’s parliamentary vote parallels the
election of Barack Obama to the American presidency last November.

In both cases opposition parties long out of power (in the Japanese
case, all but totally excluded from national power during the six
decades of the postwar Japanese government’s existence) have been
elected at a time of crisis to change the nation’s policy.

Such changes are easier to talk about than think about, or worse,
actually to accomplish, as Barack Obama has already found out. In
Japan’s case, the main problems are those of Japan’s economy, and of
its political and security relationship to the United States: one of
tactful fealty to Washington, unchanged since Japan’s defeat in the
Second World War.

This relationship initially made sense, allowing Japan to become a
great economic power in circumstances of security, despite the war in
Korea, the tensions that followed, and subsequent political upheavals
in China.

It must also eventually come to an end, and this could become a
problem for the newly-elected Democratic Party government in Tokyo.
The negatives for Japan in this institutionalized subordination to
the United States have become heavy to bear, not only politically but
in certain ways psychologically, and even spiritually. Japan, after
all, from its brilliant successes early in the Meiji era, in its
1904-1905 war with Russia, to its defeat by American nuclear bombs in
1945, was probably the most dynamic, ambitious and nationalistic
country on earth.



The leader of the victorious Democratic Party of Japan, Yukio
Hatoyama, has spoken about two aspects of the American relationship
to Japan today. The first is economic. He said his government’s
economic policy will no longer be that of American-led “unrestrained
market fundamentalism and financial capitalism,” in which “people are
treated not as an end but as a means [and] human dignity is lost.”
He spoke of respect for the “local economic practices that have been
fostered by our traditions.” This is a sympathetic position, but it
is not clear what he means in practice, even though he suggests that
America’s world economic domination is waning.

Japan’s economic success during the years of its greatest
prosperity was based on innovative and stylish consumer products of
very high technology, sold in the advanced global markets. In
addition, its heavy industry was a world leader. Today its
competition in consumer goods is great, mainly but not exclusively
from other Asian countries, and in heavy industry the competition is
from Germany, France and Italy. China, of course, is determined to
become a world competitor in every sector.

China’s ambition is usually interpreted as first to replace Japan
as Asia’s most important economy, which it may soon do in scale. But
it is not likely to outstrip Japan in technological and industrial
sophistication for a long time. In discussions of China there is a
persistent tendency towards overestimation, because of China’s size
and population, but the productivity of the workforce, and the
industrial value added, are the relevant measures.

The most important political question faced by a Japan led by the
Democratic party concerns the Japanese-American security
relationship. Mr. Hatoyama is deliberately vague on the question,
and a Democratic Party colleague says “it’s complete nonsense” to
think that the election of the Demnocrats will hurt U.S.-Japan
relations. But he then adds that “there are many things left
unchanged from the last 50 years that need to be reexamined.”

Other Japanese observe that at a time when China is developing its
military power and enlarging its global reliance on raw materials,
the U.S. military presence in North Asia and the Japanese-American
security alliance are sources of stability.

There are, however, two issues the Democrats must face. One is
public opinion. The subordinate place Japan occupies in the
relationship is humiliating: as an advanced base for American
military operations in Asia that have nothing to do with Japan’s
security, and on which Japan has no voice (the case during the
Vietnam war decade, and now with the war in Afghanistan),

The physical burden of the bases, and the social consequences of
having some 50 thousand foreign troops in your country, occupying
bases for which Japan pays 40% of the costs, plus 100% of associated
labor costs, is both onerous and increasingly exploitative.

These troops were first stationed in Japan as a defeated and
unarmed country; then as a base of operations in the Korean War; and
subsequently as a base for American operations anywhere in the
world. The original security treaty in 1951 stipulated that American
troops would remain until Japan “was able to undertake its own
defense.” It has been able to do so for many years. Japan’s present
military forces number nearly a quarter-million men and women.

The second issue is who profits from the security relationship.
What does the United States really furnish to Japan’s defense?
Putting aside North Korea, which is unlikely to wish to invade Japan
(or even to fire rockets at it to attract attention and concessions),
the think-tank scenarios of potential war in the Far East relate to
the rise of China, whose primary enemy would presumably be the United
States – not Japan. It is not evident that being America’s principal
ally and base in the region would then be to Japan’s advantage.

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