The Enigma of Japanese Power (58 page)

One must clearly distinguish between Japanese dependence on the United States and the dependence of the European countries. A state with sovereignty (the most fundamental attribute of the state) has two closely linked powers: to enforce obedience internally and to maintain independence in external relations. Japan, as we have seen, has problems on both counts. There is no central agency with the unequivocal right to rule such as could enforce obedience among the rival components of the System. Legal authority is uncertain and not backed by the strongest power within the country. Maintaining independent foreign relations, too, is a problem, because Japan cannot deliver on the promises its government makes and thus needs the indulgence as well as the protection of the USA.

The West European nations are also dependent on the USA for their protection, but this is an arrangement they have entered into as responsible states. Their internal political arrangements do not prevent the conducting of a foreign policy apart from their alliance with the USA. If, on the other hand, Japan were to lose US indulgence it would be forced to do something in which so far it has failed regularly: conduct a foreign policy in which it can be held to account for the deals it makes.

The international awkwardness of the Japanese System, insulated as it is by the extraordinary relationship with the United States, has not been adequately perceived. But developments in this century certainly inspire pessimism about its ability to manage foreign relations outside that context. The attack on Pearl Harbor was suicidal. In the 1930s, when Japan’s military power-holders were seriously contemplating the possibilities of war against the United States and the Soviet Union and Great Britain, and the diplomats were severing cordial relations left and right, none of the power-holders stood up to declare this an insane policy.

Even when defeat became certain, Japan could not muster the leadership to make sure it would retain some control over the terms of surrender. Theories about Japanese readiness to stop fighting before Hiroshima are not based on convincing evidence and reveal ignorance concerning the Japanese political system of the times. They overlook the fact that in 1945 there was no apparatus in Japan that could have chosen peace and rendered any peace negotiations credible. No person or group had the power to make acceptable to all other components of the political system – headless even in war – any surrender conditions that might have been agreed upon. The diplomatic communications reaching Washington were contradictory and ambiguous. Even after the double shock of the atomic bombs and Soviet entry into the war had informed the power-holders of a
fait accompli
, military units still attempted to sabotage the decision of the emperor and to intercept the recording of his surrender speech as it was being carried to a broadcasting station. They also dropped pamphlets from aircraft with appeals to the people to continue fighting.

Japan’s limited efforts at post-war foreign policy are not encouraging either. Allowing itself to be intimidated by the Arab world has not resulted in greater security with regard to oil supplies. For a while in the 1970s it seemed that independent approaches to Peking and Moscow were developing, but these were soon shown to be awaiting US cues. Japan’s relations with the Soviet Union have developed so that Moscow has more leverage over Tokyo than the other way round, while the policy shifts initiated by Gorbachev have not been seized on to gain an advantage.
¹²
Japan has sided with China in the Sino–Soviet dispute, but the Chinese market it hoped to gain has not materialised.

The terms under which relations with the Soviet Union were normalised in 1956, under Prime Minister Hatoyama, were subjected within the LDP to intra-party bickering of the most disruptive and disadvantageous kind, as Donald Hellmann has convincingly shown.
¹³
Striking similarities were apparent in the process leading up to the ‘anti-hegemony’ treaty with China, signed in August 1978. Here again, the decisive factor was the perennial wrangling within the LDP. Premier Fukuda Takeo initially had no intention of signing what was in fact an anti-Soviet treaty, but was drawn into it through skilful Chinese manoeuvring that made use of the LDP’s internal dynamics.

The behaviour of the press at the time was important in itself, and also exemplified the way in which developments of moment in Japanese foreign policy come about. It did not once debate the issue in terms of the merits of the treaty, or of what signing an undertaking to resist ‘hegemony’ might mean for Japan’s security and its relations with its neighbours. It was exclusively interested in the manner and the extent to which the treaty would improve Fukuda’s chances of remaining in office for one more term. The comparison with the behaviour of the press during the normalisation talks with Moscow is interesting: ‘The tangled tale of intra-party rivalry mingled with and ultimately dominated discussion of the substantive issues, and the newspaper editorials left undisturbed the resulting muddled picture. In aggregate, press coverage inhibited the effect of not only articulate but general opinion on the foreign policy-making process.’
¹⁴
If anything, the situation with the Chinese treaty was worse because neither articulate nor general opinion was anywhere in evidence. Nor was there any sign of intellectual give-and-take among the groups of bureaucrats in the Foreign Ministry who were for or against it, and who could fairly easily be identified with, respectively, the China and the Soviet Union desks.

A more recent example of the way in which intra-LDP politics determines Japan’s stance towards a powerful neighbour was the way in which the Nakasone government, eager for at least a symbolic ‘achievement’ in Japan–Soviet relations, was at one stage almost begging Moscow for a visit by Gorbachev, without offering the Soviets anything that might have induced them to comply. Tokyo has always been passive and reactive in its dealings with the two communist giants, and has allowed itself to be manoeuvred into positions in which it is vulnerable to intimidation.

There has been speculation about a possible Japanese ‘Gaullism’, but without adequate grounds. It is not that Tokyo has any overriding desire to co-ordinate its foreign policy with that of Washington, but that the bureaucrats in the Foreign Ministry and other Japanese institutions are not in a position to accept the consequences of genuine shifts in policy or to deliver on promises made. Tokyo evades foreign questions concerning Japan’s global political and economic intentions because there is no one with the authority to answer them. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has tried in the 1980s, by mediation efforts in the Iran–Iraq war and in connection with the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia – in neither case successful – to impress the world with Japan’s readiness for greater international political participation. But when foreign parties expect commitments, no active policy is forthcoming; and when conflicting domestic interests intrude, any goodwill efforts already under way come to nothing. The credibility of mediation in the Indo-Chinese conflict is undermined by the anger of the ASEAN community at the way Japan, ignoring agreements, is doing fairly large-scale business with Hanoi.

The web of Japanese power relations is so closely woven that there is no room for consideration of foreign interests, or possibility of realignment in consideration of external needs. Foreign factors are normally ignored even when they have a bearing on the long-range national interest. When Prime Minister Miki Takeo went to the first industrial summit meeting in Rambouillet, France, Japan’s administrators were extremely anxious that he might involve Japan in undesirable commitments. Cosmetic concessions in international diplomatic dealings are calibrated extremely carefully. The Japanese political world and the media refused to acknowledge and appreciate the service Nakasone performed at the Tokyo summit of 1986. According to accounts by insiders, he excelled as chairman – contrasting greatly with the mediocre performance in 1979 of Ohira Masayoshi, the first Japanese to host an international summit. But Japanese journalistic interest confined itself to what Nakasone was ‘giving away’ so as to make a good impression on the foreigners, and the effect the summit would have on wrangling within the LDP.

The only circumstance under which international factors are taken into account is a
fait accompli
created by foreign interests. The System can react with alacrity once a fully shared perception of a new external reality has imbued it with a pervasive sense of crisis. OPEC created such a reality with actions that led to the oil crisis, and Japan responded most effectively.

The accomplishments of the System have been so much admired and applauded that foreigners and Japanese alike tend to overlook its inherent defects and deficiencies, the major one being that it has no control over itself. The success with which Japanese industry and bureaucracy adjusted to changes wrought by two oil crises helped obscure the failure of the administrators as a body to face up to the necessity for a much more basic restructuring, though many concerned Japanese saw the dire need for it, even prior to the Maekawa Report. The Japanese economy is basically dependent on one market – that of the United States, which absorbs roughly 40 per cent of all Japanese exports. Agriculture, heavily protected, is in worse shape than almost anywhere else among the advanced industrialised economies where this sector still plays an important role. Industries that serve only the domestic economy are highly inefficient. Japan’s relatively low standards of comfort, despite its international economic performance, indicate the presence of major structural distortions that need correcting. All the while, the dispersion of power among a variety of administrator bodies, none holding ultimate responsibility, makes long-range, nationally integrated strategic planning impossible.

Circumstances have made the administrators superb tacticians but poor strategists. To those familiar with Japanese history the parallel with the Imperial Army in China in the 1930s is fairly obvious. The aims, of course, are different, but the situations roughly similar in the absence of a restraining, integrated long-range strategy or any perspective of what is desirable, derived from an appreciation of what is politically possible and in the national interest. The Japanese military, working out of Manchuria, proved themselves to be master tacticians. But it was also clear that their actions were not ultimately guided by an overall strategic plan taking into account the world beyond China and containing credible provisions for dealing with the contingencies of a war with the United States. As tacticians, MITI and Ministry of Finance bureaucrats, the banks, the business federations, the
keiretsu
companies and all the other institutions that have helped ensure social discipline and enhance Japanese productivity and export prowess have far outdone what the Japanese military achieved in China. But the overall result is that the nation faces great uncertainty with regard to its global position and, ultimately, its international economic viability.

The day-to-day tactics and medium-range strategies of the more capable administrators ensure further economic growth, allow accumulation of the latest foreign technology and swell the paper assets propping up the impressive effort to gain control over foreign financial institutions and amass foreign real estate. Dazzling as their results are, however, these tactics are not ultimately part of a grand overall strategy – unless, of course, economic conquest of the whole world is the unspoken aim of Japan’s administrators. Such an aim would not, even so, constitute a credible strategy, because it could never succeed.

It is inconceivable that a state with a responsible government sensitive to long-term national interests could have allowed the Japan–US relationship to deteriorate to the extent it has. Banking too heavily on US indulgence, Tokyo has badly mishandled its most important relationship – the one on which the entire edifice of its foreign relations is built. Preoccupied with their special pleading in Washington, the administrators failed to notice, or at least failed to communicate effectively to fellow administrators, the fact that Japanese actions, or inaction, were frittering away most of the considerable and genuine affection that the United States had come to have for Japan.

By the end of the 1970s it was becoming rather clear that, in spite of their importance to one another, the world’s two largest economic powers did not know how to cope with each other. Their perspectives on the relationship and its problems are incompatible. In American eyes Japan does not, in any field, play a role in the international community commensurate with its wealth. After four decades of benefits, say US critics, Japan should be willing to return the favour and share in the political costs of maintaining the alliance, if only for the sake of its own future security.

More specifically, the Americans think it grossly unfair that, while the Japanese have had almost completely free access to the US market, the Japanese market has not been hospitable to US competition. To say that the two sides are not speaking the same language is to understate the problem. The USA stresses that Japan itself stands to gain from free trade and open markets, but what it means by this – greater choices for the Japanese consumers – is not at all what the Japanese administrators understand by gain. A truly open market would undermine the domestic order, so how, in their eyes, could this ever be considered a gain for Japan?

From the viewpoint of most administrators, it is the USA that wants to change the relationship which for them is like a common-law marriage: no papers were signed, no firm arrangements established; but force of habit has forged something that is no less established and should not be less reliable than a formal treaty.

Not understanding the nature of the Japanese political economy, the USA cannot accept the way it behaves. The actual mechanism and extraordinary degree of Japan’s dependence on the USA are but dimly understood in Washington. They are more clearly felt on the Japanese side, but the psychological burden it entails does not often permit an honest self-appraisal. Occasionally, Japanese bureaucrats and columnists even imply the reverse of the real situation by concluding that the USA ‘risks losing Japan’s support’. The Japanese side is largely unaware of the threat to itself posed by the USA’s unwillingness to accept it for what it is. Never having experienced the powers of the US legislature, it cannot imagine its potential wrath.

To smooth feathers ruffled by trade conflicts, the administrators tend to raise expectations in foreign governments that are not subsequently fulfilled. In the case of the USA, Tokyo’s ritual arguments and empty promises convince congressmen, businessmen and other Americans only that they are being deceived. Japanese bureaucrats appear not to realise that the frustration of rising expectations – the classic fuel for domestic revolutions – can also be the most explosive of forces in international relations.

We have seen that during the first two years of the Nakasone government the US government had expectations of effective Japanese measures. These were partly based on the personal rapport between the prime minister and the US president, the ‘Ron–Yasu’ relationship. It was just beginning to dawn on Washington that Yasu got everything, leaving Ron nothing but a show of unanimity on military-strategic matters (which everybody took for granted anyway), when in the spring of 1985 the Senate passed by 92 votes to zero a non-binding resolution warning the president that, if he took no action with respect to trade with Japan, it would do so instead. This sent shockwaves through Japan. But the result only demonstrated that,
vis-à-vis
the outside world, the System remains politically as paralysed as ever.

The administrators tend to explain the changes in the US attitude towards Japan in terms of a weakening of the USA’s economic and political power and of the supposed frustration this has brought about. Much is made of the USA having become the largest ‘debtor’ nation and Japan its major ‘creditor’ – in reference to the large-scale Japanese purchases in the 1980s of the government bonds with which Washington covers its budget deficit. The presentation of the USA as a declining power is psychologically so comforting for a once defeated nation that it tends to be overstated.