Japan and the American-led Wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq
Marie Thorsten
Asia-Pacific Journal:
Japan Focus
Course Reader no. 14
2016Japan’s American-led Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

VOLUME EDITORMARIE THORSTEN
Doshisha University

SERIES EDITORLAURA HEIN
Northwestern University

EDITORIAL BOARD
Mark Caprio
Lonny Carlile
Parks Coble
Sabine Frühstück
Tom Grunfeld
Laura HeinJames Huffman
Jeffrey Kingston
Susan Long
Laura Miller
Mark Ravina
Mark Selden
Stephen Vlastos

Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

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The copyright of all material in this course reader is held by the respective authors, except whereotherwise noted.

The volume editor can be contacted at mthorste@mail.doshisha.ac.jp

Japan’s American-led Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

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Japan’s Participation in the American-led Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
Summary

5

Introduction

7

Foreign Policy Failure

Laura Hein and John Dower

14

Laura Hein, “Introduction” and John Dower, "The Failure of Imagination: From Pearl
Harbor to 9-11, Afghanistan and Iraq," The Asia-Pacific Journal, 36.1.10, September
6, 2010.
Shifting Orbits: UN Campaign to U.S. “Coalition of the Willing”
Gavan McCormack

36

Gavan McCormack, “Koizumi's Japan in Bush's World: After 9/11,” The Asia-Pacific
Journal, 2.12.0, October, 12, 2004.

Peter Katzenstein

60Peter J. Katzenstein, “Japan in the American Imperium: Rethinking Security,” The
Asia-Pacific Journal, 6.10.0, October 14, 2008.

MOFA

79
MOFA, “Japan’s Assistance in Afghanistan: Towards Self-Reliance,” January 2012,
online at
http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/middle_e/afghanistan/pdfs/japan_assistance.pdf

Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

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State, Society and Humanitarian War
Shirakawa Toru

81

Shirakawa Toru, "Invasion in the Name of Humanitarian Aid: The U.S. in
Afghanistan" (trans. Zjelko Cipris) The Asia-Pacific Journal, 20.2.9, May 17, 2009.

Norma Field and Imai Noriaki

88

Norma Field, “Introduction” and Imai Noriaki, “Why I Went to Iraq. Reflections of aJapanese Hostage,” (trans. Scott Mehl, Ayumu Tahara, Ariya, and Norma Field), The
Asia-Pacific Journal, 5.12.0, Dec. 29, 2007.

Marie Thorsten

124

Marie Thorsten, “The Homecoming of Japanese Hostages in Iraq: or Japan in
America's Embrace?" The Asia-Pacific Journal, 22.4.9, June 1, 2009.

Kinue Tokudome

150

Kinue Tokudome, “Waterboarding: The Meaning for Japan,” The Asia-Pacific Journal,
4.3.9, January 24, 2009.

Afghan Peace Volunteers and Douglas Lummis

159

Afghan Peace Volunteers with an introduction by C. Douglas Lummis, "An Afghan
Okinawa," The Asia-Pacific Journal, 10.22.3, May 28, 2012.

Richard Tanter

164

Richard Tanter, “The Maritime Self-Defence Force Mission in the Indian Ocean:Afghanistan, NATO and Japan’s Political Impasse,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, 6.9.0,
September 2, 2008.

Japan’s Participation in the American-Led Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

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Responsibility and Remembrance
Michael Penn and Asahi Shimbun

179

Michael Penn and Asahi Shimbun, “Japan On the Fifth Anniversary of the Iraq War”

Sato Taketsugu

180

Sato Taketsugu, “SDF Mission to Iraq Still Not Properly Evaluated,” The Asahi
Shimbun, March 21, 2008 (original article)

Asahi Shimbun

182

Asahi Shimbun, “Iraq War Five Years On,” March 19, 2008 (original article)
Michael Penn

185

Michael Penn, “The Legacy of Japan’s GSDF in Samawa,” Shingetsu Newsletter No.
957. March 30, 2008 (original article)

David McNeill

189

David McNeill, "Secrets and Lies: Ampo, Japan’s Role in the Iraq War and theConstitution," The Asia-Pacific Journal, 7.5.10, February 15, 2010

Richard Falk

196

Richard Falk, "The 10th Anniversary of the Iraq War," The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol.
11.11.3, March 18, 2013.

Recommended Further Reading201

Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

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SummaryJapan assisted the U.S. and NATO-led, UN-mandated war in Afghanistan(2001-continuing), and contributed to the more exclusively U.S.-led, andcontroversial “coalition of the willing” that supported America’s intervention in Iraq
(2003-11). Japan defined its goals as humanitarianism, reconstruction, andreconciliation. Its actions included:• Deploying Marine Self-Defense Forces (J-MSDF) for refueling for coalition
members in the Indian Ocean (2002-2010);• Deploying 600 Ground Self-Defense Forces (J-GSDF) to the southern Iraqi city of
Samawah in Iraq (2004-2006). The non-combat troops were involved inreconstruction efforts and protected by UK and Australian troops;• Deploying about 200 Air-Self Defense Forces (J-ASDF) troops to the Ali Al-Salem
Air Base in Kuwait to airlift humanitarian aid and reconstruction equipment to Iraq
(Jan. 2004-Dec. 2008);• Dispatching JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) volunteers and otherdevelopment and technical specialists to conduct massive reconstruction efforts in
Afghanistan (under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or MOFA);• Facilitating six multinational dialogues in Japan between the Taliban, theGovernment of Afghanistan, and other nations.
• Facilitating reconciliation seminars among Iraqi Sunni and Shi’ite members ofparliament, held in Japan;• Pledging monetary reconstruction aid to both conflicts. Japan is the largest
national donor after the USA for reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan; from 20042005, during its deployment to Iraq, Japan was the largest humanitarian donor to
Iraq.
Under the administration of President George W. Bush,1 the American government
considered its role in both conflicts as counterterrorism. It first implemented its“war on terror” strategy in Afghanistan, in retaliation against Osama bin Laden’s Al
Qaeda network for the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 on the United States.
Part of the Afghanistan effort included ousting the government of the Taliban, which
controlled the nation from 1996-2001 and provided a base for multinational
members of Al Qaeda to operate. Counterterrorism strategy also extended to areasof Pakistan under Taliban influence. The conflict in Afghanistan continues and is thelongest war in American history. In 2003, Bush and his closest ally, Prime Minister
Blair of the United Kingdom, launched a second attack on Iraq, making the argument
1 From the start of the war in Afghanistan in 2001 until now, the United States has had two presidents

representing two political parties, the Republican party of President George W. Bush (2000-2008) and the
Democratic party of President Barack Obama (2009-2016). Japan has had seven prime ministers (including
the administration of Abe Shinzō, elected twice and counted here as one), representing two political parties:
the Liberal-Democratic Party (jimintō), from 2001-2009 (Koizumi Jun'ichirō, Abe Shinzō, Fukuda Yasuo, Asō
Tarō) and again starting in 2013, with Abe Shinzō’s second election; and the Democratic Party of Japan(minshutō), serving from 2009-2012 (Hatoyama Yukio, Kan Naoto and Noda Yoshihiko).

Japan’s Participation in the American-Led Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

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that the nation was planning to use weapons of mass destruction, although such
weapons were never found. Taking office in 2009, President Barack Obama ended
U.S. involvement in Iraq in 2011, with some residual personnel remaining until
2012.
Official documents under the Bush administration refer to the “Global War on
Terrorism,” a slogan dropped under the Obama administration.
As a reminder, Al Qaeda did not have operations in Iraq prior to the Americanintervention in 2003. A sub-group, Al Qaeda in Iraq, formed after that conflict began.
The present-day Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria (ISIS, also called ISIL or Daesh)
emerged from Al Qaeda in Iraq and in 2013 began territorial takeovers of large
areas of Syria and Iraq. ISIS also has operations in Afghanistan and has claimed
responsibility for a number of terrorism attacks throughout the world.

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Introduction: Attacks of “9/11”
On September 11, 2001, a sunny Tuesday morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four
American passenger planes in coordinated suicide attack missions directed at landmark
sites in America. The first plane, American Airlines Flight 11, hit the North Tower of theWorld Trade Center in New York City at 8:46 a.m. Seventeen minutes later, while all theworld’s media were covering the story without knowing exactly what happened, a second
hijacked plane, United Airlines Flight 175, crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade
Center. At 9:37 a.m., a third plane crashed into the Pentagon. Passengers aboard a fourthplane, United Airlines Flight 93, fought back against hijackers who intended for it to hit a
Washington, D.C. target, perhaps the U.S. Capitol; it instead crashed into farmland in
Pennsylvania shortly after 10 a.m. In less than two hours, nearly 3000 people of several
nationalities perished in the four coordinated attacks.
Members of the U.S. government learned of the first crash into the North Tower
from CNN and assumed it was a pilot error. The possibility that the attacks were acts ofterrorism became apparent after the second attack. Key American leaders assembled avideoconference and within hours, intelligence pointed to the Al Qaeda network under theleadership of Osama bin Laden, who was born in Saudi Arabia and operating in Afghanistan
under the Taliban government.2
The visual spectacle of the collapsing World Trade Center towers transfixed people
all over the world, and foreign leaders immediately released diplomatic statements ofcondolences for the victims, condemnation of the perpetrators, and support for Americancounter-terrorism efforts. One day after the attacks, the United Nations Security Council
unanimously adopted Resolution 1368, expressing the readiness of the international
community to take steps to bring the perpetrators to justice. This involved implementing
mechanisms designed to ensure global cooperation against terroristic threats.
The first foreign leader whom Bush contacted was British Prime Minister Tony
Blair, who had just declared, "This is not a battle between the United States of America andterrorism, but between the free and democratic world and terrorism. Vowing to “standshoulder to shoulder” with “our American friends,” Blair aggressively sought to build aninternational coalition to fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, travelingworldwide to have 54 meetings with foreign leaders in the first two months after theattacks.3

2 Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, was born in Saudi Arabia in 1957, and killed by the UnitedStates in Pakistan in 2011.

3 “Tony Blair’s Corrosive Allegiance to George Bush Laid Bare for the First Time,” London Evening

Standard, October 27, 2007, retrieved from www.standard.co.uk

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War Against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan
With coalition support, on October 7, 2001, Bush announced that the United States
and Britain had begun “carefully targeted” strikes on Taliban and Al Qaeda camps in
Afghanistan. A month later, Bush pushed for further global support by insisting thatpartners must help America fight its “Global War on Terrorism” in a world that offers noroom for fence-sitting,4Over time it's going to be important for nations to know they will be held
accountable for inactivity…You're either with us or against us in the fight against
terror.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) quickly authorized the intervention
in Afghanistan and sent in its own multinational coalition in January 2002. Before 9/11,
many believed NATO would become obsolete without the cold war. Originally mandated to
oppose post-World War II Soviet communism, NATO members included Western European
countries, the United States and Canada. Leaders found an opportunity to redefine NATO’srole in a global context by supplying Bush with multinational forces involving as many fifty
nations, putting into action the fifth article of the original NATO Treaty, enacted in 1949and designed to work in concert with the United Nations charter,5Article 5
The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe orNorth America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently theyagree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right ofindividual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of theUnited Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith,individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary,
including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North
Atlantic area.
Axis of Evil: Broadening the “War on Terror”
When Bush took office in 2001, his attention was on East Asia. Bush’s first secretaryof state, Colin Powell, assured that, "We do plan to engage with North Korea and pick up
where President Clinton and his administration left off."6 On the occasion of his 2002 Stateof the Union address four months after 9/11, Bush broadened the scope of the conflict. He
4 Cited in “Bush says it is time for action,” CNN, November 6, 2001, retrieved fromhttp://edition.cnn.com/2001/U.S./11/06/ret.bU.S.h.coalition/index.html
5 “The North Atlantic Treaty,” NATO, April 4, 1949, retrieved fromhttp://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_17120.htm
6 “Kim’s Nuclear Gamble: Chronology,” PBS Frontline, 2003, retrieved fromhttp://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kim/etc/cron.html

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claimed that a terrorist “axis of evil”—North Korea, Iraq and Iran— “threaten the peace of
the world” because, he said, they seek weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and are likely
to traffick arms to terrorists, attack American allies or “blackmail” the United States.7 The
American government further monitored weapons in North Korea and Iran while planninga full-scale invasion of Iraq.
Although the UN, NATO, and much of the international community gave theirendorsement to the American-led intervention in Afghanistan, the same was not true whenthe Bush administration expanded its counterterrorism strategy to Iraq. Even some ofAmerica’s key allies such as France and Germany believed that the invasion of Iraq
constituted an unjust and illegal act of aggression. Unlike the Taliban government leading
Afghanistan at the time, the Iraqi government was not linked to the Al Qaeda terrorists
responsible for the attacks on America. Moreover, as is well known by now, Iraq did notpossess weapons of mass destruction, the main rationale for the pre-emptive strikeordered by the United States and allies as a counterterrorism strategy in 2003.
Japan’s Immediate Response to the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
Participating in the wars was politically complicated for many of the states that agreed to send
troops and other assistance, a fact that the United States and United Kingdom failed to appreciate.
This was especially true in the case of Japan, since Article Nine of its Constitution prohibits the useof force to resolve international disputes. It states:(1) Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, theJapanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and thethreat or Use of force as means of settling international disputes.
(2) To accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, aswell as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of thestate will not be recognized.

During the Gulf War of 1991, when a US-led, UN-mandated coalition fought Iraqi
leader Saddam Hussein over his invasion of Kuwait, Japan handled that prohibition byoffering substantial sums of money (and land mine clearance equipment) to the coalition,
but no personnel. Allies criticized Japan for “checkbook diplomacy” that risked no Japanese
lives. In response, immediately after that conflict, Japan enacted the International Peace
Cooperation Law (1992) enabling its Self-Defense Forces to participate in UN Peacekeeping
7 George W. Bush, State of the Union (Washington, D.C.: The White House), January 29, 2002, retrieved fromhttp://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129-11.html The key speechwriter, CanadianDavid Frum, wrote that he was given an assignment specifically "to provide a justification for a war," assumed
to mean a war with Iraq. Frum aimed to analogize the new enemy with the “axis” of World War II, and his
superiors instructed him to use the theological tone of “evil.” Iran and North Korea were added to the troika,
perhaps, speculates Hendrick Hertzberg, to follow a “rule of three,” to broaden the global reach of the enemy,or, most likely, as “affirmative action”: North Korea was “bused in to lend diversity to what would otherwise
have been an all-Muslim list.” See Hendrick Hertzberg, “Axis Praxis,” The New Yorker, January 13, 2003,
retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/

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Operations. Since then, over 10,000 civilian and military personnel have deployedoverseas in nearly thirty operations including in Cambodia, East Timor and Sudan. Thisparticipation can only legally take place in situations where all parties to an armed conflicthave already agreed on a cease-fire.
In 2001, Japanese ambassador to the UN, Sato Yukio, cited the responsibility ofJapan to support the American confrontation of Al Qaeda as something imperative tobenefit the whole international community. In his October 2, 2001 address to the UN
General Assembly, he signaled Japan’s willingness “to engage even more actively ininternational cooperation, both within and outside the United Nations, to eliminate
international terrorism.”8 On October 29, 2001, Japanese lawmakers passed the AntiTerrorism Special Measures Law, allowing Japan to provide “rear area” support to U.S.
military operations on foreign territory. Japan’s leaders from the ruling Liberal-Democratic
Party (LDP) also viewed participation in the conflicts in terms of duty to the U.S.-Japan
alliance, as well as “a rare opportunity to promote their own visions of Japanese national
interests,” as Michael Penn sums up, which for this administration meant legitimizing andstrengthening the Japanese military.9
Within weeks, three Japanese naval vessels sailed from Sasebo naval base to theIndian Ocean to begin refueling support for the U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan.
Japan’s role was minimal compared with contributions from other key allies of the UnitedStates, and still limited to humanitarian work, yet this participation was nonethelessmomentous given Japan’s history of pacifism after the Second World War. When it joined
America’s “coalition of the willing” in Iraq, Japan sent its first deployment of ground troops
to an ongoing conflict not supported by the United Nations since 1945. Before 9/11, North
Korea had been Japan’s main foreign policy concern, so the “axis of Evil” declaration helped
link Japan to cooperative counterterrorism efforts with the United States and other allies.
Yet the actions in Iraq and Afghanistan greatly heightened Japan’s overseas militarypresence. As the Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement included here shows, the Japanese
government also emphasized the humanitarian goals of its actions in Afghanistan, but thishas not satisfied critics who want to maintain the tradition of pacifism, as the essays in
Section III show.
Since Japan’s Withdrawal
The Marine Self-Defense Forces in the Indian Ocean, the Ground Self-Defense Forcesin Iraq, and the Air Self-Defense Forces who conducted airlifting missions from a base in

8 Yukio Sato, “Statement by Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Permanent Representative ofJapan Mr. Yukio Satoh at the 56th United Nations General Assembly, Oct. 2, 2001. Cited in Michael Penn, Japanand the War on Terror: Military Force and Political Pressure in the US-Japan Alliance (London: I.B. Taurus,2014), p. 171.
9 Michael Penn, Japan and the War on Terror: Military Force and Political Pressure in the U.S.-Japanese Alliance(London: I.B. Tauris, 2014), pp. 2-3.

Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

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Kuwait suffered no fatalities among its armed forces, although there were some hostagetaking incidents and deaths involving other Japanese citizens. At the end of 2003, justbefore Japan joined the coalition of the willing in Iraq, two of its diplomats were killed in an
ambush attack. These sparked intense controversy in Japan, as discussed in Part III.
In Fall 2007, the Anti-Terrorism Special Measures Law that allowed the J-MSDF
refueling mission in the Indian Ocean to support multi-national troops in Afghanistan was
set to expire. The LDP government wanted to renew the law but it was not popular among
opposition leaders and the general public. Then Prime Minister Abe (LDP), in office for just
one year in his first administration, resigned abruptly after publicly staking his career on
the extension of the Anti-Terrorism Law. Though many factors likely led to his unusual
resignation, Abe formally connected his exit to the need “to turn the tide” against domestic
opposition to American-led counterterrorism activities. Abe declared, “Under a new prime
minister, the government should aim to continue the fight against terrorism, and to provide
a breakthrough in this situation.”10 Nonetheless, the Anti-Terrorism Law expired in
November 2007, and the administration of Prime Minister Fukuda enacted a new law, theReplenishment Support Special Measures Law, on January 11, 2008, which narrowed
Japan’s involvement in the Iraq conflict and only allowed refueling to continue until
January 2010. Then in 2010, newly installed Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio ended thelaw as part of his Democratic Party of Japan’s (DPJ) platform to reduce Japan’s dependence
on the United States and to support Article Nine of the Constitution. The DPJ had opposed
participation in the US-led conflicts from the beginning, and had just taken over thepremiership of Japan after almost continuous postwar leadership of the LDP.
By then, the U.S.-led wars, particularly in Iraq, had become more unpopular andmany major countries had withdrawn from the coalitions. Indeed, Americans elected
Barack Obama as President in 2009 in part because of his opposition to the discredited Iraq
intervention while he was a state senator in Illinois. Aiming to keep his promise to end
both wars, Obama initiated America’s withdrawal from the Iraq conflict in 2011 and begana “drawdown” from Afghanistan in 2014 (though he was unable to complete this). By then,even government and military insiders had become more pessimistic about the prolonged
conflicts that failed to result in decisive victory. Daniel Bolger, a retired lieutenant general,
titled his 2014 memoir, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan
War, and begins it bluntly: “I am a United States Army general, and I lost the Global War on
Terrorism.” Bolger affirms that the American-led wars were “two long, indecisivecounterinsurgent struggles” that overstretched their limited purposes because of initial
euphoria, arrogance and lack of adequate domestic debate or military opposition.11
10 Brett Murphy, “Japan PM resigns amidst fight over anti-terror law renewal,” Jurist, September 12, 2007,

retrieved from http://jurist.org/paperchase/2007/09/japan-pm-resigns-amidst-fight-over-anti.php;
Norimitsu Onishi, “Prime Minister of Japan to Step Down,” New York Times, September 12, 2007, retrieved
from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/12/world/asia/12cndjapan.html?ex=1190260800&en=3ba45a84c63534ae&ei=5065&partner=MYWAY&_r=0
11 Daniel Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars (Boston: Houghton

Mifflin Harcourt, 2014, pp. xiii, xvi, 442)

Japan’s Participation in the American-Led Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

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Just as Americans increasingly described themselves as “war-weary,” in Japan amore confidently repackaged Abe Shinzo returned as prime minister in late 2012, vowing
to reinstate Japan’s cultural pride and military strength. Prime Minister Abe’s current
campaign is to revise the pacifist Constitution to allow Japan to possess a full-fledged
military. Abe began promoting the need for Constitutional reform to the LDP coalition
partner, Komeito in earnest in 2014. Abe succeeded in passing two new security laws
through parliament to effectively reinterpret Article Nine. One law explicitly allows Japanto provide logistical support for foreign troops in situations that affect Japan’s security, andthe other allows Japan to protect allies under attack under the concept of collective selfdefense. The new security legislation went into effect in March 2016. Abe is expected tocontinue his campaign for full revision of the Constitution.
Japan’s attention to Afghanistan and Iraq subsided as new military tensions in East
Asia challenged the military relationship between the United States and Japan. One of themain issues at stake throughout decades of postwar debate on Article Nine has been thefear that Japan would get dragged into America’s wars. That issue remains important.
Since Japan’s pullout from Iraq and the Indian Ocean a second concern is whether
Americans would protect Japan in a possible war with China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu
Islands.12 The tiny, uninhabited islands are claimed by both Japan and China but areadministered by Japan. The area they occupy in the East China Sea has become increasingly
contentious since 2012, with both nations making provocative shows of military strength
in the area to the extent that war might break out at any time. As one official from the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs complained, fearing American reluctance to get involved in
more military conflicts, “Is the Obama administration really to be counted on?”13 And it is
not at all clear that it is in the best interests of the United States to support Japan if thisdispute flares up into all-out war. Security expert Doug Bandow has advised Americans not
to be dragged into war against China on behalf of allies such as Japan, over a territorial
dispute such as the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. “Benefits to America are indirect and limited,”
he warns, and the impression that the United States will “bail out” allies who are in trouble
only encourages them to possibly “underinvest in defense, take greater risks, rejectcompromises, and dismiss negotiations.”14 So far, however, the governments of both Japanand America have continued to express a strong commitment to each other’s security.

12 U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has formally stated that, “Article V of the U.S.-Japan Mutual Defense

Treaty applies to the Senkaku Islands,” obliquely signifying U.S. support for Japan. U.S. Dept. of Defense,“Statement by Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel on the East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone,”
November 23, 2013, retrieved from http://www.defense.gov/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=16392

13 Takashi Oshima, “Japan Questions Whether It Can Still Rely On U.S. Alliance,” Asahi Shimbun/AJW, February

4, 2014.
14 Doug Bandow, “Americans Shouldn’t go to War with China over Asian Territorial Disputes,” Forbes, August

5, 2016 (commentary).

Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

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The extent to which America’s post-9/11 conflicts affected state and society in Japan
at the beginning of the 21st century may seem unimportant amid other global problems
such as acts of terrorism conducted by ISIS and the global rise of authoritarian, nativist
politics often directed at immigration and refugee problems. In Japan, too politicians andcitizens have turned their attention to the “3.11” earthquake-tsunami-nuclear disaster, newlevels of conflict with China, and debate over Constitutional revision. Yet the post-9/11“war on terror” mainly involving American-led interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq
deserves renewed attention. Many of these transnational problems have roots in thediscredited foreign policy decisions of the “war on terror,” including the rise of anti-Muslim
sentiment and even ISIS itself. The officials who seek to redefine Japan’s security role also
draw from their experience in Japan’s first overseas mission to a conflict zone since the endof World War II.
Japan’s participation in the U.S.-led wars still matters to its sociopolitical climate—both regarding international relations and domestic politics. That experience raisedquestions such as: How much should Japanese citizens trust allies’ representations ofinternational conflicts? Should Japan resume an international posture focused on United
Nations support, rather than mainly the US-Japan alliance? Can citizens criticize the foreign
policy decisions of their government? To reflect on those questions and other issues
concerning the American-led interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, this course reader
offers some of the key articles published in the Asia-Pacific Journal during the peak years of
those conflicts.

Dower: The Failure of Imagination

14

Chapters
Foreign Policy Failure
After the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, those who search military history fora strategic imbecility comparable to December 7, 1941, will no longer come up
dry.15 –John Dower, 2009
After the 9/11 Commission Report concluded that “imagination failure” was one of
the factors contributing to the government’s failure to anticipate 9/11 or effectively
manage its aftermath, John Dower expands the concept of “imagination failure” to begin in
the years before Pearl Harbor and stretch all the way to the American intervention in Iraq
in Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor/Hiroshima/9-11/Iraq (2009). This course reader uses an
excerpt from that book titled, "The Failure of Imagination: From Pearl Harbor to 9-11,
Afghanistan and Iraq."
The Failure Of Imagination: From Pearl Harbor to 9-11, Afghanistan and Iraq.
John Dower with an Introduction by Laura Hein
September 6, 2010
http://apjjf.org/-John-W.-Dower/3405/article.html
Introduction
The Asia Pacific Journal is proud to offer its readers a preview of John W. Dower’s newbook, Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor/ Hiroshima/ 9-11/ Iraq (New York: Norton 2010). In
the first days after the Al Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on
September 11, 2001, prominent American news sources reacted by invoking the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s description of the eventas an act of “infamy.” That analogy caught the attention of many people, but Dower has
thought more deeply than most about the underlying issues. The resonances between the pastand the present are profound and disturbing.
Dower attends to what people do and also how they justify their actions, because he wants toknow why smart people—and smart societies—do such stupid things. More precisely, he isinterested in why they do the same stupid things over and over again, often with suchmalevolent consequences. His conclusions about the cultures of war do not bode well for the
future. This excerpt focuses on why the United States government was unprepared for theattacks in 1941 and again in 2001 and, to a lesser extent, on the reasoning of both sets ofattackers. The “failure of imagination” he analyzes was systemic, involving the failure to

15 John Dower, Cultures of War, pp. 17-18. “Strategic imbecility” was the original expression of Samuel Eliot

Morison, Dower, pp. 26, 115.

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accurately perceive either the potential enemy or ourselves, regardless of the “we” inquestion. When it comes to war, no one seems to get it right.
Dower is particularly good at registering when his subjects are judging other societies bystandards other than those reserved for themselves and teasing out the consequences of thoseassumptions. Some of that dissonance is racial contempt, the subject that he earlier pioneeredin War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon Books,
1986). Readers familiar with that book will not be surprised by the dismissive language withwhich Americans proclaimed their natural superiority over Japanese—or the extent to which
the Japanese sense of privilege based on racial pride mirrored the American one. People were
franker about their racial views in the 1940s than today but, alas, Dower had no trouble
finding recent assessments that emphasized similar contempt for “people with towels on theirheads” and “Arabs wearing robes.” Yet, racism, although impossible to ignore, is not the
precise center of the problem. That honor goes to the arrogance of thinking of one’s own
society as superior because it is richer or more influential, not just on racial grounds. Thissmugness explains why Americans simply could not imagine the possibility of effective attacks
by either the Japanese or Al Qaeda, even though, as Dower documents, ample evidence existedof not only enemy intentions but also enemy capabilities. Even more disturbingly, as he gently
concludes here, on both occasions the shock of the attacks caused Americans to jump directlyfrom under-estimating Japanese/Al Qaeda military capability to wild anxiety about “anomnipotent, unslayable hydra of destruction,” as the 9-11 Commission put it.
Dower asks what happens when Americans judge Japan or Al Qaeda by the same standards as
we do the United States, and the freshness of his conclusions reveals how rarely this exercise isconducted. As he explains here, the Japanese decision to attack the United States in 1941 wasa “war of choice,” dressed up as a war of necessity, in terms very like those used sixty years
later by American government leaders explaining the attack on Iraq. Both decisions werebased on some spectacularly wrongheaded assumptions, woven into a rationale that in otherrespects was logical and informed. So, for example, once Japanese leaders decided that
controlling large portions of the Asian mainland was vital to national security, it became very
hard not to widen the war in 1941 when faced with strong US pressures to contain their
expansion. Americans likewise ignored all the lessons of the failed Soviet attempt to control
Afghanistan as well as the advice of nearly all experts on Iraq. And, as the combatants inmany conflicts have discovered, after the fighting has started and people have died, it ispolitically and psychologically easier to continue a war than to end it on any terms other thancomplete victory.
Refusing to treat foreigners as rational and morally recognizable human beings also blinds us
to the unintended consequences of our own actions. Dower describes here how the Hearst
newspaper chain congratulated itself in 1945 for having warned its readers steadily from the
1890s that Japan was dangerous. Readers of Dower’s earlier work will also recognize one of
his key themes, muted in this excerpt: that, although these newsmen were writing for an
American audience, Japanese people, including government officials, also read theeditorials. In other words, the hostility of the Hearst papers certainly contributed to theJapanese belief that war with the United States was inevitable. The controversy erupting inAugust 2010 over whether a planned Islamic cultural center would defile the “sacred ground”
of lower Manhattan seems likely to have similar consequences. Many of the Americans

Dower: The Failure of Imagination

16

commenting on this plan seem unaware, let alone concerned, that their characterization ofIslam itself as an enemy force confirms Al Qaeda’s view of the world. Indeed, acknowledging
such audiences, and the legitimacy of any of their concerns, is too often treated as unpatriotic
in the context of a culture of war.
In his 1999 book, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, (New York: Norton
and the New Press) Dower explored the vast (and sometimes unintentionally hilarious) gap
between American rhetoric and its actual behavior during the postwar occupation of Japan.
Strikingly, most of the Americans involved remained oblivious to the contradictions, eventhough they were blindingly obvious to outside observers. The ease with which they ignored
their own behavior rivaled Japanese wartime self-deception about their efforts to rescue Asia
from Western imperialism. Both nations insisted that they be judged by their ideals rather
than by their actions. No doubt Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein did the same.
Perhaps most disturbingly, but also admirably, Dower challenges the idea that striving to put
intelligent and ethical people in power is enough. He has a great eye for quirky individuals
and diverse personalities, both decision makers and clever observers. Their biggest mistakes
are honest ones, although secrecy, propaganda, and cynicism all play supporting roles. Rather
than evil villains, the officials highlighted here are smart, usually sincere, and deeply, deeply
flawed. Yet, although individuals do make a difference in Dower’s mental world, his message isthat lack of respect for far-away people and absence of humility about our own behavior isembedded in institutions as well. Unless we change both the attitudes and the institutions
that nurture our cultures of war, we are doomed to repeat our costly mistakes forever. LH“Little yellow sons-of-bitches”
In all the many volumes of documents, testimony, and commentary about the intelligence
failure of 1941, there are no more telling words than an informal confession made by
Admiral Kimmel while the congressional hearings of 1945–46 were taking place.
Although the commanders in Pearl Harbor had received a “war warning” message from
Washington on November 27, ten days before the attack, when the first wave of Japaneseplanes swept in, General Short was caught with his air force tightly bunched on the ground,most of his ammunition locked away, and major airfields such as Hickam without any
antiaircraft guns. Admiral Kimmel’s Pacific Fleet (except the carriers, which by sheer good
fortune had put out for maneuvers) was peacefully at anchor in the harbor. These were theshocking failures that led the first post–Pearl Harbor investigation to charge the two
officers with dereliction of duty, later tempered in the findings of the congressional inquiry
to grave errors of judgment.

Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

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Both Short (who died in 1949)
and Kimmel (who passed awayin 1968, at eighty-six) argued
that Washington failed to share
all the information about
Japanese plans it had gleaned
through the still-secret Magiccode-breaking operation. Never,they claimed, were they
explicitly instructed to prepare
for an actual attack. The two
officers were given theJapanese crew cheers torpedo plane taking off from
opportunity to defend
the Shokaku, one of six aircraft carriers in the attack
themselves in the postwar
force
hearings, where Short read a
61-page typed statement andKimmel’s prepared statement ran to 108 pages. The disgraced admiral’s most cryptic andpersuasive explanation of why he had been caught by surprise, however, came in a lunchbreak conversation with Edward Morgan, a lawyer who eventually drafted the majority
report. As Morgan recalled it years later, the exchange went as follows:Morgan: Why, after you received this ‘war warning’ message of November 27, did you leave
the Fleet in Pearl Harbor?
Kimmel: All right, Morgan—I’ll give you your answer. I never thought those little yellow
sons-of-bitches could pull off such an attack, so far from Japan.1
Although unvarnished language like this did not make it into the transcript of the hearings,
the majority report did take care to argue that “had greater imagination and a keener
awareness of the significance of intelligence existed . . . it is proper to suggest that someone
should have concluded that Pearl Harbor was a likely point of Japanese attack.” Failing tothink outside the box is a theme that surfaces and resurfaces in the serious generalliterature. Gordon Prange, for example, speaks of “psychological unpreparedness”; Roberta
Wohlstetter, of “the very human tendency to pay attention to the signals that support
current expectations about enemy behavior.”2
Admiral Yamamoto, like his American navy counterpart, also put the American failure inplain language—in his case, in two personal letters written shortly after the attack. On
December 19, he wrote this to a fellow admiral:
Such good luck, together with negligence on the part of the arrogant enemy, enabled us tolaunch a successful surprise attack.3

Dower: The Failure of Imagination18

Two days later, writing to thestudent son of a personal
friend, Yamamoto made a bit
clearer what he had in mind in
speaking of American
arrogance. This letter, in its
entirety, read as follows:
22 December 1941
My dear Yoshiki Takamura,

Japanese attack planes taking off

Thank you for your letter. That
we could defeat the enemy at
the outbreak of the war was
because they were unguarded
and also they made light of us.
“Danger comes soonest when it
is despised” and “don’t despisea small enemy” are really
important matters. I think they
can be applied not only to wars
but to routine matters.
I hope you study hard, taking
good care of yourself.

Japanese aerial photograph of the first torpedo bombs Good-bye,hitting U.S. warships on Battleship Row
Isoroku Yamamoto4
Yamamoto obviously misread American psychology disastrously when expressing hopethat the surprise attack would strike a crippling blow at morale. The Americans, however,also disastrously misread and underestimated the Japanese. Can there be a more precise
confirmation of Yamamoto’s perception of Japan being “despised” and made light of as a“small enemy” than Kimmel’s frank reference to “those little yellow sons-of-bitches”?

Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

19

Japanese map of the Pearl Harbor attack
In a rational world, this should not have been the case. American perceptions of Japan as apotential foe traced back to the turn of the century, when Japan startled the world bydefeating China and Tsarist Russia in quick succession (in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–
95 and Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5), thereby joining the Western, Caucasian, andChristian expansionist nations as one of the world’s few imperialist powers. Financiers in
New York and London had helped finance the Russo-Japanese War, and many Westernobservers expressed admiration for the doughty “Yankees (or Brits) of the Pacific,” butsuch support and praise were hardly unalloyed. The obverse side of support and respect
for Japan and its spectacular accomplishments in “Westernization” was fear of the “Yellow
Peril”—fear, that is, that Asia’s masses would acquire the scientific skills and war-making
machinery hitherto monopolized by the West.5
From the 1890s to the eve of Pearl Harbor, influential U.S. media such as the Hearst
newspapers relentlessly editorialized that Japan posed a direct threat to the United States.
Concurrent with Japan’s formal surrender in September 1945, the Hearst syndicate ran a
two-page advertisement in Business Week proudly itemizing how “for more than 50 years,
the Hearst Newspapers kept warning America about JAPAN.” The spread reproduced “astartling prophetic cartoon” from 1905 depicting a Japanese soldier standing in Korea withthe sun behind him and his shadow falling across the Pacific onto the west coast of theUnited States. It boasted about how “the Hearst Newspapers first pointed out the ‘Yellow
Peril’ of Japan to U.S. aims and interests in the Pacific” in the 1890s; how in 1898 it had“urged the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands by the United States as a defense measureagainst growing Japanese power in the Pacific”; how in 1912 the paper had “focusedDower: The Failure of Imagination

20

national attention on Japanese attempts to colonize Lower California”; and on, and on, up to1941, when “the Hearst Newspapers, right up to the time that bombs fell on Pearl Harbor,were still hammering for increased naval appropriations and for strengthened
fortifications in the Pacific.”6Here, it would seem, was imagination and “psychological preparedness” in abundance; andthe United States did, in fact, adopt strategic policies that took the rise of Japan into
consideration. Hawaii was annexed in 1898, and from 1905 Navy planners identified Japanas the major hypothetical enemy in the Pacific; there was, of course, no other candidate. In
the color-coded contingency plans the Navy introduced before World War I, war plans visà-vis Japan were coded “Orange.” It has been calculated that, over ensuing decades, officers
at the Naval War College tested and refined the Orange plan at least 127 -times.7
In May 1940, the clarity of Japan’s intent to advance into Southeast Asia and the South
Pacific led to transfer of the U.S. Pacific Fleet from the west coast of the United States to
Hawaii, as a more visible “deterrent.” Several months prior to the Pearl Harbor attack, thisostensible deterrent was augmented by carefully leaked plans to strengthen U.S. forces in
the Philippines with advanced B-17 “Flying Fortress” bombers. (In October 1941, Secretaryof War Stimson expressed hope that the threat of these bombers would suffice to keep
Japan from going after Singapore “and perhaps, if we are in good luck, to shake theJapanese out of the Axis.”) Three times in 1941—in June, July, and October—the army andnavy in Hawaii were placed on alert during particularly tense moments in the deteriorating
relationship between the two -countries.8
Beyond this deep history of mistrust and fear, it might have been expected that the plain
nuts-and-bolts of military developments—the huge buildup of warships, aircraft, andground forces that took place in the years preceding Pearl Harbor—would have made itapparent that Japan would be a formidable foe. This was not the case, and as a consequence
it was more than just the unexpected attack that shocked Americans. Even more unnerving
was the competence of the Japanese military.
This, at least, should not have come as asurprise. Japan had been working toward acapability for waging “total war” since theearly 1930s. (Such thinking dated back tolessons drawn from World War I, which
stimulated military strategists everywhere toconsider how to mobilize the total resourcesof the nation in the eventuality of anothergreat war.)9 Isolation from the worldcommunity after the takeover of Manchuria in
1931 accelerated these plans, and from 1932
on the military establishment dominated theJapanese government. The nation had been at
war with China for over four years at the time
Pearl Harbor was attacked; and while theinterminable nature of this conflict could beJapan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

21

taken as a sign of military shortcomings and overextension, the other side of the coin wasthat the China war had created an experienced fighting force and spurred major advancesin military technology.
These developments were not hidden, but even the experts failed to see them clearly—or,
at least, to see them whole. Thus, the list of Japan’s military capabilities that caught theAmericans by surprise seems quite astounding in retrospect. Their torpedoes were moreadvanced than those of the Americans. (It was last-minute development of an airplanelaunched torpedo with fins, capable of running shallow, that made the Pearl Harbor attack
so deadly.) Their sonar, which the Americans believed inferior, was four to five times more
powerful than what the U.S. military had at the time. Although the high-speed Mitsubishi“Zero,” introduced to combat in China in August 1940, was more effective than any U.S.
fighter plane at the time, the Americans underestimated its range, speed, andmaneuverability.
The list goes on. According to testimony introduced at the congressional hearings, theJapanese had “better material in critical areas such as flashless powder, warhead
explosives, and optical equipment.” Japan’s monthly output of military aircraft by
December 1941 was more than double what the Americans estimated it to be. Their pilots,
intensively trained and also seasoned by combat in China, were among the best in theworld. As noted in an authoritative history of the U.S. air forces in World War II, “theaverage pilot in the carrier groups which were destined to begin hostilities against theUnited States had over 800 hours” of flying experience. The “first-line strength” of theimperial air forces “gave them a commanding position in the Pacific.”10
In Prange’s emphatic estimation, on December 7, 1941, “Japan stood head and shoulders
above any other nation in naval airpower.” The British military historian H. P. Willmott
concludes that “in December 1941 the Imperial Japanese Navy possessed clear superiorityof numbers in every type of fleet unit over the US Pacific and Asiatic fleets”; that it had“superiority over its intended prey” in the crucial category of aircraft carriers; and that intactical technique, it was “second to none” at the opening stage of the war. Willmott also
observes that the land-based Betty medium bomber developed by the Japanese in the
1930s “possessed a range and speed superior to any other medium bomber in service
anywhere in the world.” Other sources call attention to the Imperial Navy’s exceptional
skill in night gunnery, and its initial advantage in launching torpedoes from cruisers. As the
audacious December 7 attack made painfully obvious, the ability of Japan’s naval officers toplan and execute an exceedingly bold and complex operation—particularly one involving
carriers—was simply beyond imagining. Except, of course, that the Japanese had imagined
it down to the last detail.11
What accounts for this American failure of imagination?
Racism is part of the answer, but only part. The Japanese were not merely “sons-of-bitches.”
They were “little,” and they were “yellow.” In the American vernacular, the phrase “little
yellow men” had become so common that it almost seemed to be a single word. To be“yellow” was to be alien as well as threatening (as in the “Yellow Peril”); but the reflexive
adjective “little” was just as pejorative, for it connoted not merely people of generallyDower: The Failure of Imagination

22

shorter physical stature, but more broadly a race and culture inherently small in capability
and in the accomplishments esteemed in the white Euro-American world.
Such contempt was not peculiar to Americans. It was integral to the conceit of a “whiteman’s burden” and sneering animus of white supremacy that invariably accompaniedWestern expansion into Asia. When, after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese swept in andconquered their supposedly impregnable outpost in Singapore, the British also expressed
disbelief (and engaged in the same sort of racial invective). Wherever and wheneverobjectivity overrides prejudice, it is usually the exception that proves the rule.12
Still, racial blinders alone do not adequately account for the failure to anticipate Pearl
Harbor. The Americans also were unable to imagine what it was like to look at the worldfrom Tokyo. From the Japanese perspective, the entire globe was in turbulent flux andgrave crisis. The nation’s situation was desperate. Its cause was just. And things had cometo such a pass that there was no alternative but to take whatever risk might be necessary.13
Rationality, Desperation, and -Risk
The top-secret policy meetings that took place at the highest level in Japan from the springof 1941, including “Imperial Conferences” at which diplomatic and military decisions wereapproved by the emperor, are provocative in retrospect because of the generic, rather thanuniquely Japanese, outlook they reveal. It was unthinkable for the nation’s leaders toquestion the assumption that China, including Manchuria, was Japan’s economic lifeline, orthat the war there was not merely essential to national survival but also moral and just.
Indeed, with Japan having already “sacrificed hundreds of thousands of men” in invading
and occupying China, it was all the more inconceivable to consider military withdrawal
from the continent as the United States had demanded in pre–Pearl Harbor negotiations. It
also was taken for granted that the nation could not break the military stalemate in China
without access to the strategic resources of Southeast Asia, and time was running out. “Our
Empire’s national power,” explained the head of the Planning Board at one critical meeting,“is declining day by day.” The argument that creation of a “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity
Sphere” would ensure not only the “security and preservation of the nation” and well-beingof all Asia, but ultimately “world peace,” went unchallenged.14
This was not propaganda intended for domestic or international consumption. It was whatthese men believed—the assumptions and emotions that guided their deliberations anddecisions. And so, in the end, the policy makers agreed there was no choice but to break off
relations with the United States and “move South.” To give in to U.S. demands would be“national suicide.” “I fear,” Prime Minister Tōjō stated at a critical meeting in earlyNovember, “that we would become a third-class nation after two or three years if we justsat tight.”15
The fateful decision to secure their nation’s position in Asia by pursuing a war of choiceagainst the United States and other Allied powers was reinforced by a number of seemingly
sane and rational projections. These included German victory in Europe, particularly
against England and the Soviet Union; U.S. difficulties in fighting a two-front war; thestrength of isolationist sentiment in the United States, and consequently probable domestic
opposition to a protracted war in the Pacific; and the fact that there was a current of
thinking in U.S. ruling circles, exemplified by Joseph Grew, that saw a constructive role forJapan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

23

Japan as a “stabilizing force” against “chaos and communism” in China. Additionally, it wasargued that while Japan lacked the industrial potential of the United States, its army andnavy were huge; its forces, including air forces, were seasoned by combat in China; and theesprit de corps of the emperor’s loyal soldiers and sailors was superior to whateverfighting spirit the Americans could hope to marshal. (In a casual conversation a few months
after arriving in defeated Japan, General MacArthur told a British diplomat he “would havegiven his eyeballs to have such men” as the Japanese forces he encountered in thePhilippines.) Given such considerations, it did not seem unreasonable to hope that the war
would end in some sort of negotiated settlement with the United States, with both sides
cooperating in maintaining peace in Asia.16
Counterfactual rumination (the “what if” school of history) also helps illuminate themisplaced optimism of Japan’s war planners. That Japan was able to drag out the war forover three and a half years after Pearl Harbor was due in considerable part to the priority
the United States gave to the European theater. At the same time, with a little more luckand operational shrewdness Japan might have prolonged the war even longer. For
example, what if: (1) Germany had not attacked the Soviet Union while the Japanese weredescending their slippery slope to war, thus leaving resistance to U.S. and British forces
stronger on the European front; (2) the U.S. carriers had been berthed at Pearl Harbor at
the time of the attack, and had not been by sheer chance at sea; (3) the Pearl Harbor attack
force had launched a third wave of strikes and destroyed repair facilities and critical fuelsources; (4) the Japanese had changed their military code in 1942, thus thwarting major
post–Pearl Harbor U.S. breakthroughs in cryptanalysis that proved critical not only indecisive battles such as Midway but also in the ongoing decimation of Japanese warships
and merchant vessels by American submarines; (5) Japanese naval commanders had beenless timid at decisive battles such as Midway and the Solomons? (The counterfactual
question that trumps all others is what if Japan had excluded Pearl Harbor and thePhilippines from the December 1941 offensive? This would have eliminated the“Remember Pearl Harbor” rage that solidified the nation behind retaliation, and forced the
Roosevelt administration to decide whether or not to declare war in the face of continuing
isolationist opposition.)
There is almost no end to the “what ifs” of history, and perhaps military history inparticular. (Hitler’s folly in deciding to attack the Soviet Union is the great strategic what
if where the war in the West is concerned.) Be that as it may, Japan’s desperation andconsequent willingness to take extreme risks also enter the strategic equation. It was
irrational to miscalculate the psychological impact the Pearl Harbor attack would haveamong Americans, and hope instead that demoralization would be the result. By the samemeasure, however, the U.S. leadership was grievously negligent in ignoring the possibilityof direct attack once it became clear the Japanese had concluded they could not retreat in
China and, unless the Western powers lifted their embargoes on strategic exports, had noalternative but to move into Southeast Asia.
Military men, like politicians, cherish cherry-picked history and the symbolism and rhetoricof past challenges and glories. When MacArthur took the Japanese surrender on
the Missouri in September 1945, the flag raised at Morning Colors was the same Stars andStripes that had flown over the Capitol in Washington on December 7, 1941, while theDower: The Failure of Imagination

24

bulkhead overlooking the ceremony displayed the thirty-one-star flag Commodore
Matthew Perry had flown on his flagship in 1853, when he initiated the gunboat diplomacythat forced Japan to abandon its feudal seclusion. In the surprise attack of December 7, theJapanese engaged in similar symbolism. As the attack force approached Pearl Harbor, theflagship Akagi ran up the “Z” flag signal that had been hoisted more than thirty-five years
earlier by Admiral Heihachirō Tōgō in the decisive 1905 Battle of Tsushima, in which
Tōgō’s modern warships destroyed a huge Russian armada that had sailed all the way fromthe Baltic, thereby assuring Japan’s emergence as a great power. The signal read, “The riseand fall of the Empire depends upon this battle; everyone will do his duty with utmost
efforts.”
Shortly before this, the commander of the Pearl Harbor attack fleet read an “imperial
rescript” to his men that had been prepared earlier by the emperor. “The responsibility
assigned to the Combined Fleet is so grave that the rise and fall of the Empire depends
upon what it is going to accomplish,” the message said. Japan’s sovereign placed his trust in
the fleet to accomplish what it had long been training for, “thus destroying the enemy anddemonstrating its brilliant deed throughout the whole world.”17
One side’s infamy was the other’s brilliant deed, on which the very fate of the empire
depended.
Aiding and Abetting the Enemy
Al Qaeda commanded no military machine on September 11. It had been engaged in nonegotiations with the United States, nor could it have been, not being a nation-state.
Although Osama bin Laden’s ambitions had grown ever more expansive over the years
since Al Qaeda’s founding in 1988, and although U.S. intelligence specialists took seriously
his vision of a “great Caliphate,” he was not engaged in an escalating quest for autarky—for
military and economic domination of a formal, secure, and self-sufficient sphere of
influence—comparable to the quest that had obsessed Japan ever since its takeover ofManchuria in 1931.18
Even here, however, certain points of comparison merit attention. A full decade ofmounting tensions preceded Pearl Harbor, beginning with the impasse over Manchuria. In
the case of Islamist terrorism, the first attack in the United States took place in 1993, when
the World Trade Center suffered extensive damage from explosives detonated in a parked
van. Although later intelligence connected this to Al Qaeda, this was not clear for a numberof years. A National Intelligence Estimate distributed in July 1995 predicted future terrorist
attacks against and in the United States, but the 9-11 Commission concluded that Al Qaeda
itself was not identified in a conspicuous manner until around 1999—three years after the
NSC’s Richard Clarke dates this “discovery,” eleven years after the organization was
founded, six years after the first attack on the World Trade Center, and only two years
before the September 11 attack.19
Where the actual attack plans for 1941 and 2001 are concerned, both were quite long in
the hatching. The Pearl Harbor operation was conceived by Admiral Yamamoto at the endof 1940, probably in December, and the first draft of an operational plan was drawn up thefollowing March (by Commander Minoru Genda and Rear Admiral Takijirō Ōnishi, who inlate 1944 would become the prime mover behind the kamikaze attacks). By April, theJapan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

25

project had been moved into command channels, and training in activities such as aerial
torpedo practice commenced in May and June. War games for the entire “Southern
Operation,” including Hawaii, were carried out in Tokyo over a ten-day period beginning
September 11.
The “Operation Hawaii” plan was accepted in principle by the navy chief of staff in midOctober, and Emperor Hirohito was briefed on this at the imperial palace some time
between October 20 and 25. “Dress rehearsals” by the fleet began in October, and the plan
received final approval by the navy general staff in early November. On November 17,
vessels assigned to the attack force began making their way to Hitokappu Bay in the Kurile
Islands (under Japanese control since the Russo-Japanese War), from where—on
November 25 (November 26, Japan time)—the fleet would depart for the attack. In Al
Qaeda’s case, where there is less information, the 9-11 Commission simply concluded thatthe complex September 11 operation was “the product of years of planning.”20
It is also provocative to note that collusion or at least mixed signals between the Americanside and the enemy preceded both catastrophic surprise attacks. In U.S.–Japanese relations,this took several forms. Despite the fact that the 1937 invasion and occupation of China
provoked fairly widespread sympathy for China and condemnation of Japan in the UnitedStates, until around mid-1940 pressures to appease Japan came from many directions. For
all practical purposes, isolationists associated with “Fortress America” and “America First”
activities often found themselves on the same page with peace and antiwar groups. Bothdesired that the United States isolate itself from foreign conflicts and avoid provoking
Japan in any way that might lead to hostilities. As late as October 1941, one informal
council devoted to “prevention of war” that included several well-known scholars of Far
Eastern relations was still urging the government to “make a deal” with Japan. At bothofficial and public levels, attention focused far more on Europe than on Asia, particularly
after Germany unleashed its blitzkrieg in 1939; to some degree, this fixation on the war in
Europe strengthened popular opposition to any involvement in the conflict in Asia.21
Japanese leaders, naturally attentive to such sentiments, found them in more explicitly
governmental circles as well, where officials like Ambassador Grew were cautiously
receptive to the argument that Japan could be a bulwark against both domestic chaos in
China and Soviet-led international communism. Although Grew became increasingly
critical of Japan’s actions beginning in mid-1940, as late as September 1941 he was still
urging “constructive conciliation.”22
Just as encouraging, if not more so, was the attitude within U.S. business circles. The dollar
value of U.S. exports to Japan in 1937 was more than five times that of the export tradewith China, and in 1940 still amounted to roughly three times the China trade. A major
portion of these exports consisted of strategic materials such as aviation fuel, crude andrefined oil, scrap iron, and steel—all critical to the Japanese war machine. A fair indicationof sentiment in the business community emerged in a survey published in Fortune
magazine in September 1940, allegedly tapping the views of some “15,000 businessmen”
including directors of the 750 largest American corporations. Forty percent of respondents
chose to “appease” the Japanese, and another 35 percent to “let nature take its course.”23

Dower: The Failure of Imagination

26

The United States did not begin to impose serious controls over exports until mid-1940,
when Japan, following the fall of France to the Nazis, moved troops into the northern half ofFrench Indochina and began the courtship that would culminate in the Axis alliance in
September. Part of the U.S. concern involved old-fashioned colonial interests—namely, fearthat losing Southeast Asia would deprive Britain of critical resources. The scenario that
unfolded thereafter became an all-too-familiar tit-for-tat game: the more the U.S.
government tightened economic screws to deter Japanese aggression, the more persuaded
Japanese leaders became that their empire faced disaster and there was no alternative but
to “move South.”
Although there was no comparable economic dimension in the rise of Islamist terrorism,
there was an analogous prehistory of support and appeasement prior to September 11. In
the closing decade of the Cold War, U.S. strategic planners embraced the prospect of an
anticommunist “arc of Islam” stretching east from the Middle East along the underbelly of
the atheistic Soviet Union. The policy birthed by such thinking took the form of covert
collaboration with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in recruiting, training, and arming radical
mujahideen for the war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan between 1979 and 1989.
President Ronald Reagan posed for a photograph with mujahideen leaders in the WhiteHouse in 1986, and at one point CIA director William Casey, a devout Catholic, sponsored atranslation of the Qur’an for dissemination to Uzbek-speaking holy warriors. More striking
is the weaponry provided to these anti-Soviet zealots by true believers in Washington who
were persuaded that a shared monotheism made Christians and radical Islamists kindredsouls. As itemized by Steve Coll, these weapons included “antiaircraft missiles, long-range
sniper rifles, night-vision goggles, delayed timing devices for plastic explosives, andelectronic intercept equipment.” Also part of this covert support were Japanese-madepickup trucks, Chinese and Egyptian rockets, Milan antitank missiles, and somewhere
between 2,000 and 2,500 heat-seeking Stinger missiles. Although material U.S. aid was
directed primarily to the Afghan resistance forces rather than volunteer Arab fighters (likebin Laden), the U.S. government looked favorably on the latter.24
Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistani political leader assassinated in 2008, dwelled on thisshortsighted Realpolitik in a book completed only days before her death. In her view, theblowback from covert engagement in the anti-Soviet Afghanistan war (which involved
close U.S. collaboration with Bhutto’s political adversaries in Pakistan) was by no means an
exceptional instance of myopic Western policies in the Middle East. On the contrary, theUnited States and European powers had a long history of engaging in “double standards” bypreaching freedom and development while in actual practice supporting both dictators and,in Afghanistan, the most radical and oppressive Islamist fundamentalists. Over the courseof decades, she concluded, the West had “unintentionally created its own Frankenstein’s
monster.” These were harsh words and more than a little disingenuous, since while she
was prime minister of Pakistan from 1993 to 1996, her own government—alarmed by thecivil strife that followed the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989—had provided
covert financial support, supplies, and military advisers to the extremist Taliban who later
provided a haven for bin Laden.25
Monsters commonly have multiple creators, but this does not diminish the U.S. role inhelping to promote Islamist radicalism early on. Like the Japanese soldiers and sailors who

Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

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became seasoned veterans in the war against China and initially benefitted materially from
U.S. support through trade in strategic goods, the mujahideen—once proxy soldiers for the
U.S. government and romanticized “freedom fighters” in Washington and the U.S. media—
emerged from Afghanistan as hardened fighters primed for new missions. It fell to Al Qaeda,
birthed in Afghanistan in 1988, to define that mission for them.
“This little terrorist in Afghanistan”
The stunning “asymmetrical” victory of Afghan and Muslim fighters over the Soviet Union
emboldened Islamist radicals to believe they could prevail over U.S. military power as well.
In a television interview more than three years before 9-11, bin Laden boasted that the
victory of lightly armed holy warriors in Afghanistan “utterly annihilated the myth of theso-called superpowers.” (This interview was rebroadcast on Al Jazeera nine days after 911.) By contrast, U.S. policy makers drew few if any counterpart lessons. With the collapseof the Soviet Union, the politicized zealotry they had encouraged in Afghanistan no longer
attracted top-level attention. Even within the U.S. military, the effectiveness of Islamist
insurgency and terror did not prompt serious attention to counterinsurgency doctrine. 26
This was true when the Soviet Union withdrew its humiliated forces from Afghanistan in
1989 and official Washington proceeded to remove the latter nation from its radar. It was
still true in 2001, when the United States invaded Afghanistan and routed the Taliban in thewake of the 9-11 attacks. And, despite belated attention to counterinsurgency tactics in
Iraq beginning around 2006, it would remain largely true where Afghanistan wasconcerned to the end of the Bush presidency, when the Taliban were on the upsurge andagain helping shelter bin Laden. At the beginning of 2009, as a new administration assumed
power in Washington, Russia’s ambassador to NATO looked back on the twentiethanniversary of the Soviet withdrawal and held this up as a mirror to the beleaguered U.S.
military mission in Afghanistan. “They have repeated all our mistakes,” he observed, “andthey have made a mountain of their own.”27
Why did top military and civilian leaders fail to take asymmetrical threats from Al Qaeda
and the Islamists seriously? As with the earlier failure to take Japanese military capabilities
seriously, part of the answer lies in racial arrogance and cultural condescension. WhenCharles Freeman, the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia at the time of the first Gulf War in
1991, tried to draw attention to the mujahideen after the Soviet withdrawal fromAfghanistan, for example, he found no one interested, including top leaders at the CIA. “Partof the attitude in Washington,” he recalled, “was, ‘Why should we go out there and talk to
people with towels on their heads?’”28
Michael Scheuer, who headed the CIA’s “bin Laden unit” until being cashiered in 1999, tells
a similar story in even grittier language. Washington’s top personnel and policy makers, hedeclared, are “so full of themselves, they think America is invulnerable; cannot imagine therest of the world does not want to be like us; and believe an American empire in thetwenty-first century not only is our destiny, but our duty to mankind, especially to theunwashed, unlettered, undemocratic, unwhite, unshaved, and antifeminist Muslim masses.”
One could only describe this hubris as “arrogance (or is it racism?),” Scheuer went on. The
elites simply could not fathom that “a polyglot bunch of Arabs wearing robes, sportingDower: The Failure of Imagination

28

scraggly beards, and squatting around campfires in Afghan deserts and mountains could
pose a mortal threat to the United States.”29
This was the “little yellow men” mindset transferred to the Middle East. As in 1941, civilian
and military planners underestimated the enemy and failed to grasp both the depth of theirself-righteousness and their willingness to take enormous risk as well as heavy losses. Most
disastrously, they were unable to imagine this enemy possessing the cunning andcompetence to pull off a complex and imaginative act of aggression. None of his peers
challenged Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz when, five months before 9-11, hedismissed bin Laden as “this little terrorist in Afghanistan.”Once again, as with system breakdown and leadership negligence, the diagnostic languagein postmortems of the failure of imagination exposed on September 11 is essentially thesame as that which analysts have long used in describing the disbelief that greeted Pearl
Harbor: psychological unpreparedness, prejudices and preconceptions, gross underestimationof intentions and capabilities. There is a sense of encountering a pathologist’s repetitive
case book, glossing near-identical cases. Thus, to crib from Roberta Wohlstetter: prior to
September 11, American analysts (with some marginalized exceptions) and decision
makers simply were unable “to project the daring and ingenuity of the enemy.” To borrowfrom Admiral Yamamoto’s letter to a young student: Bush administration planners wereundone by the arrogance of despising a small enemy. To appropriate Admiral Kimmel’s
pithy words: no one in a position of command thought that those little Muslim sons-ofbitches could pull off such a spectacular attack, so far from home.
In this ethnocentric world,
terrorists of the twenty-first
century were “little men” in acompound sense—little because
they were racially, ethnically,
culturally, and religiously alien;
and little because, unlike Japan
sixty years earlier, and unlike
the Soviet Union or China oreven Iraq, Iran, and North Korea,
they were not a nation-state.
When Richard Clarke criticized
the Bush administration’s
disregard of the Al Qaeda threat,and its subsequent misguided
response to September 11, hismost vivid revelations
World Trade Center on September 11, 2001
concerned the immediate
response—and disbelief—of the president’s inner circle of advisers:
On the morning of the 12th, DOD’s [the Department of Defense’s] focus was alreadybeginning to shift from al Qaeda. CIA was explicit now that al Qaeda was guilty of theattacks, but Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld’s deputy, was not persuaded. It was tooJapan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

29

sophisticated and complicated an operation, he said, for a terrorist group to have pulled off
by itself, without a state sponsor—Iraq must have been helping -them.
On the same day, September 12, Clarke went on to record, President Bush “grabbed a few”
intelligence experts including himself: “‘Look,’ he told us, ‘I know you have a lot to do andall . . . but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if
Saddam did this. See if he’s linked in any way.’”30
These responses, revealed after the invasion of Iraq, can be interpreted as genuine or
Machiavellian (already preparing to use the 9-11 outrage to initiate a long-desired war
against Iraq)—but in all likelihood they were both. Ensuing use of the “war on terror” toinvade Iraq, with all the distortion of intelligence data this involved, was duplicitous; but
the prior failure to take Al Qaeda or the terrorist threat really seriously reflected a lingering
Cold War mindset. The 9-11 Commission singled out “imagination” as one of “four kinds offailures” revealed by the attacks of September 11. (The other three were “policy,
capabilities, and management.”) The commission even went so far as to recommend
remedying this by “institutionalizing imagination”—an oxymoron one could easily imagine
the bureaucratic behemoth taking seriously to heart by forming committees, preparing
flow charts, and perhaps even creating a supersecret NIA (National Imagination Agency).31
In a passing comment, the 9-11
Commission also took note ofwhat happens when, after
unexpected catastrophe,erstwhile little men prove to beformidable adversaries:

President Bush proclaims “Mission Accomplishedaboard the USS Lincoln on May 1, 2003 following US
invasion of Iraq

Al Qaeda and its affiliates are
popularly described as being allover the world, adaptable,
resilient, needing little higherlevel organization, and capableof anything. The American
people are thus given the
picture of an omnipotent,
unslayable hydra of destruction.
This image lowers expectations
for government effectiveness.

What the commission was
evoking was what one U.S.
counterterrorism official called “the superman scenario.” The shocking success of the little
Muslim men abruptly endowed them with hitherto undreamed-of powers andcapabilities—to the extent of precipitating a declaration of a global war on . . . what? On atactic (terror). On a worst-case scenario where Al Qaeda or other terrorists might obtainweapons of mass destruction. Eventually, this paranoia reached such a level that deflating
hyperbole became almost a category in itself in the burgeoning popular literature on
terrorism. As another counterterrorism expert put it, writing specifically about Al Qaeda,

Dower: The Failure of Imagination30“by failing to understand the context of the organization, its very strengths and weaknesses,
we magnified our mental image of terrorists as bogeymen.” Yet another posed therhetorical question “Are they ten feet tall?” and deemed it necessary to answer this.
“They’re not,” he assured his audience.32
A comparable cognitive dissonance took place after Pearl Harbor. In American eyes, theJapanese foe morphed, overnight, from little men into supermen. Until 1943 or even 1944,
when the war turned unmistakably against Japan, the cartoon rendering of the enemy wasoften a monstrously huge figure. Like the 9-11 Commission, more sober commentators
responded by warning of the danger of exaggerating the enemy’s resources and capabilities
to the point where this became demoralizing. A typical essay in the Sunday New York Times
Magazine in March 1942, for example, might have served as a draft for post–September 11
warnings about being carried away by the specter of an unslayable hydra of destruction. It
was titled “Japanese Superman? That, Too, Is a Fallacy.”33
John Dower is Ford International Professor of Japanese history at M.I.T. His numerous
publications include War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, and Embracing
Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National
Book Award. He is an Asia-Pacific Journal Associate. His new book, from which the present
article is excerpted is, Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor / Hiroshima / 9-11 / Iraq.
Laura Hein teaches Japanese history at Northwestern University and works on
democratization in postwar Japan in a variety of institutional settings. She is an Asia-Pacific
Journal coordinator. A co-editor of Living With the Bomb: American and Japanese Cultural
Conflicts in the Nuclear Age, her book in press is Imagination Without Borders: Feminist
Artist Tomiyama Taeko and Social Responsibility. She wrote this introduction for The AsiaPacific Journal..
Notes
1 Prange, Pearl Harbor, 515. Morgan recounted this to Prange in an interview in October 1976.
2 Report of the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, 259; Prange,

At Dawn We Slept, 689; Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor, -392.

3 Prange, Pearl Harbor, 552; Goldstein and Dillon, The Pearl Harbor Papers, -121.
4 Goldstein and Dillon, The Pearl Harbor Papers, -122.
5 The conflicting images of Japan at the turn of the century emerge vividly in several

lavishly illustrated units on the “Visualizing Cultures” website produced at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology by John W. Dower and Shigeru Miyagawa. Seevisualizingcultures.mit.edu, and particularly “Throwing Off Asia” (in three parts), “Asia
Rising,” and “Yellow Promise/Yellow Peril.” The latter two units are based on Japanese andforeign postcards of the Russo-Japanese War in the Leonard Lauder Collection at theMuseum of Fine Arts, Boston, and “Yellow Promise/Yellow Peril” is particularly
illuminating on the ambiguous European response to Japan’s stunning emergence as a
powerful imperialist -power.

Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

31

6 Business Week, September 1, 1945. This ad is reproduced in John W. Dower, “Graphic

Japanese, Graphic Americans: Coded Images in U.S.-Japanese Relations,” in Akira Iriye andRobert A. Wampler, eds., Partnership: The United States and Japan, 1951–2001 (Kodansha
International, 2001), 304–5.
7 For general treatments of these matters, see Akira Iriye, Pacific Estrangement: Japaneseand American Expansion, 1897–1911 (Harvard University Press, 1972); also Spector, Eagle
against the Sun, esp. chs. 1–5. The 127 tests and revisions of Orange are noted in ibid., -57.
8 On the B-17 bombers, see Prange, Pearl Harbor, 145–52, 290–93; also Spector, Eagle

against the Sun, 74–75. The three Pearl Harbor alerts are described in detail in
Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor, 71–169.

9 See, for example, Michael A. Barnhart, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for

Economic Security, 1919–1941 (Cornell University Press, 1987).

10 Prange, Pearl Harbor, 537, 555–56; Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor, 336–38; E. Kathleen

Williams, “Air War, 1939–41,” in Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate, eds., The Army
Air Forces in World War II, vol. 1: Plans and Early Operations, January 1939 to August
1942(University of Chicago Press, 1948), 79–80. On the development of the Mitsubishi Zeroas seen from the Japanese side, see the translated account by the chief designer Jiro¯
Horikoshi, Eagles of Mitsubishi: The Story of the Zero Fighter (Washington University Press,
1980); also Akira Yoshimura, Zero Fighter (Praeger, 1996).
11 Prange, Pearl Harbor, 550, 569; H. P. Willmott, The Second World War in the Far

East (Smithsonian Books, 1999), 54, 66, 78, 83–84; Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of
War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy (Indiana University Press, 1973),-276.
12 For an archives-based analysis of World War II in Asia that is acutely sensitive to (andquotable about) Anglo racism, see Christopher Thorne, Allies of a Kind: The United States,
Britain, and the War against Japan, 1941–1945 (Oxford University Press, 1979). American
racism vis-à-vis Asians was complicated by the positive attitude many Americans had cometo hold toward China by the late 1930s. Although “anti-Oriental” movements and legislation
constitute a deep stain in U.S. history of the nineteenth and early twentieth century,
sympathy toward the Chinese in their struggle against the Japanese was strong—adevelopment that derived in considerable part from the exceedingly effective positive
image of the Chinese purveyed by popular writers such as the Nobel Prize–winning Pearl
Buck. I address these matters at length in War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific
War (Pantheon, 1986).
13 It is worth keeping in mind that surprise attacks have been common in modern times.

These include the attack by Germany on the Soviet Union in 1941; by North Korea on South
Korea in 1950, and soon after this the entry of the People’s Republic of China into the
Korean War; and the Tet offensive in the Vietnam War in -1968.
14 For examples of the bedrock assumptions noted here, see Ike, Japan’s Decision for War,78, 80, 82, 148, 152, -160.

15 Ike, Japan’s Decision for War, 238, -246.

Dower: The Failure of Imagination

32

16 Katharine Sansom, Sir George Sansom and Japan: A Memoir (Diplomatic Press, 1972), 156(MacArthur’s quote).

17 Goldstein and Dillon, The Pearl Harbor Papers, 155. For the Missouri surrender ceremony,see Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, vol.
14: Victory in the Pacific (Little, Brown, 1960), 362–63. The flag that had been flying over
the Capitol on December 7 had previously been displayed at Casablanca (where the Allied
policy of “unconditional surrender” was announced in February 1943), Rome, and -Berlin.

18 Japan’s vision of what was needed to be secure and self-sufficient escalated steadily after

the Manchurian Incident of 1931, with huge leaps taking place in 1937, with the invasion ofChina; in mid-1940, with the movement of Japanese forces into northern French Indochina;
and of course in 1941, when the “move South” precipitated the attack on Pearl Harbor. As
the empire expanded, so inevitably did the political rhetoric that accompanied it. Thus, theproclaimed “New Order” of 1938 (embracing Japan, China, and the puppet state ofManchukuo) metamorphosed into the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in 1940.
Until around 1936, advocates of the “move South” fought a vigorous internecine battle withproponents of a “move North” against the Soviet Union, aimed at seizing the strategic
resources of the Soviet Far East. (The Japanese army was more inclined to “move North”
than the navy.) The “move North” argument continued to be advocated up to the eve of thePearl Harbor attack, and the Americans were well aware of this from their intercepts of theJapanese diplomatic code. This was yet one more distraction—one more example of“noise”—that compounded the analysis of Japan’s intentions. Some high-level U.S. planners(such as Rear Admiral Richmond Turner of the War Plans Division) were so fixated on the“move North” possibility that, in the eyes of later critics, they seriously impeded balanced
intelligence analysis; Prange,Pearl Harbor, 326–31, is strong on this. For a close analysis of
the “rational” quest for autarky or autonomy that drove Japanese expansion from theManchurian Incident to the war with China, see James B. Crowley, Japan’s Quest forAutonomy: National Security and Foreign Policy, 1930–1938 (Princeton University Press,
1966).
19 The 9-11 Commission Report, 341–42; Clarke, Against All Enemies, ch. 6 (133–54), esp.

148. Terrorist attacks on U.S. targets abroad also mark this period, of course, notably thosein Beirut (1982), Libya (“Pan Am 103” in 1988), Somalia (1993, later identified as involving
Al Qaeda), Saudi Arabia (1995–96), and Kenya and Tanzania (1998, instigated by Al Qaeda).
20 This timetable for planning the Pearl Harbor attack has been extracted from Prange, At

Dawn We Slept, 15, 27–28, 101, 106, 157–58, 223–31, 299, 309, 324, 328, 345, 372. On Al
Qaeda’s planning, see The 9-11 Commission Report, -365.
21 Warren I. Cohen, “The Role of Private Groups in the United States,” in Borg andOkamoto, Pearl Harbor as History, 421–58. The well-known scholars of Far Eastern affairs
who urged conciliation with Japan included Payson Treat, A. Whitney Griswold, and Paul
Clyde; ibid., 452–53. Cohen concludes his detailed study with the observation that “theAmerican people remained overwhelmingly opposed to involvement in the Far Eastern
conflict or in any war”; ibid., -456.

Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

33

22 Grew abandoned his general policy of appeasing Japan in a famous “green light” cable to

the State Department on September 10, 1940, but continued to maintain hope that U.S.
responsiveness to Japan’s perceived interests would strengthen the influence of“moderates” within the Japanese government. His September 1941 advocacy of“constructive conciliation” came in conjunction with proposals for a personal meeting
between Roosevelt and Prime Minister -Konoe.

23 Mira Wilkins, “The Role of U.S. Business,” in Borg and Okamoto, Pearl Harbor as History,

341–76. This excellent analysis includes useful tables and charts. For the Fortune opinion
poll, see 350–51; Wilkins speculates that the poll, published in September 1940, wasprobably conducted in early July—just before the Roo-sevelt administration imposed thefirst serious restrictions on strategic -exports.

24 Steve Coll’s Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from theSoviet Invasion to September 10, 2001(Penguin, 2004), won the Pulitzer Prize. See esp. 92–
93, 97–98 on Casey; 90, 104 on translation of the Qur’an; 11, 125–37, 149–51, 175 on
weapons and other support for the Afghan fighters; and 155 on moral support for the nonAfghan mujahideen. The U.S. role in playing midwife to the mujahideen is also documented
in vivid detail in Robert Dreyfuss, Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash
Fundamentalist Islam (Metropolitan, 2005), esp. ch. 11. The photograph of President
Reagan meeting with mujahideen “freedom fighters” from Afghanistan is reproduced on
the cover of Eqbal Ahmad, Terrorism: Theirs and Ours (Seven Stories Press, 2002).

25 Benazir Bhutto, Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West (HarperCollins, 2008), ch.

3, esp. 81–85, 149–55. Bhutto’s secret role in providing covert aid to the Taliban is noted inColl, Ghost Wars, 289–94, 298–300.
26 Bin Laden, Messages to the World, 48 (March 1997), 65, 82 (December 1998), 109(October 21, 2001), 192–93 (February 14, 2003). On the absence of counterinsurgency
doctrine and training, see chapter 5 (notes 176–178 of this book).
27 Clifford J. Levy, “Poker-Faced, Russia Flaunts Its Afghan Card,” New York Times, February

22, -2009.

28 Freeman is quoted in Dreyfuss, Devil’s Game, 290–91 (from an April 2004 interview withthe author).

29 Scheuer, Imperial Hubris, 197–98.
30 Clarke, Against All Enemies, 30–32, -232.
31 The 9-11 Commission Report, 339–48.
32 The 9-11 Commission Report, 364; Hersh, Chain of Command, 91–92; Michael A.

Sheehan, Crush the Cell: How to Defeat Terrorism without Terrorizing Ourselves (Crown,2008), 6, 14. Jack Goldsmith, a conservative lawyer who became head of the president’s
Office of Legal Counsel in October 2003, devotes an entire chapter of his book to the role of“fear bordering on obsession” in driving post–9-11 administration policies; The Terror
Presidency: Law and Judgment inside the Bush Administration (Norton, 2007), ch. 3 (esp. 71–76), also 165–67.

Dower: The Failure of Imagination
33 Nathaniel Pfeffer, “Japanese Superman? That, Too, Is a Fallacy,” New York Times

34

Magazine, March 22, 1942. In a book written many years ago, I dwelled at length on imagesof the enemy from both sides of the war in the Pacific, including the metamorphoses of theJapanese from little men to supermen. See War Without Mercy, esp. ch. 5 (“Lesser Men andSupermen”). This is not a unique phenomenon, and need not involve race. A similar “little
men to supermen” transformation took place, for example, in the so-called missile-gap
crisis that followed the Soviet test of an intercontinental ballistic missile in -1957.

Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

35

Shifting Orbits: Toward the U.S. “Coalition of the Willing”
Just before and after 9/11, Japanese were intensely focused on North Korea. They
had just learned that the North Korean government had systematically abducted Japanesecitizens for espionage purposes. During a state visit by Prime Minister Koizumi to North
Korea in 2002, North Korean president Kim Jong-il confirmed that his country had
abducted thirteen ordinary Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s—including some onlyin their teens. The purpose was for the abductees to train North Korean spies in Japanese
language and mannerisms so that they could disguise themselves as Japanese citizens.
Following negotiations, five of the kidnapped citizens were allowed to return to Japan.
North Korea claimed that eight of them had already died, while Japan has failed to verify
this evidence and also claims that nineteen citizens or more were kidnapped—not just thethirteen acknowledged by North Korea claims. The abduction news exacerbated anxiety
over North Korea’s spasmodic nuclear threats and tests, made still worse by lingering
mutual enmity as a result of colonialism, World War II and Japan’s postwar security
alliances with South Korea and America. In other words, Japan’s relationship with North
Korea was already terrible at the time Bush broadened the scope of the “war on terror” toinclude the unlikely “axis of evil” encompassing North Korea, Iran and Iraq.
Meanwhile in Europe, because Germany and France opposed the American plan toinvade Iraq, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed them as “old Europe” –outof touch with the new nations hoping to redefine NATO.16 The societies and governmentsof France and Germany agreed that any decision to invade Iraq should be made by theUnited Nations, and only after the UN inspectors confirmed weapons of mass destruction.
As stated above, Japanese public opinion was divided over the intervention, with many
people agreeing with France and Germany. The government wished to join the “coalition of
the willing” in part because it hoped for American support in its confrontation with North
Korea, similar to the growing conflict with China over the disputed islands. Gavan
McCormack views Koizumi Jun’ichiro’s close relationship with U.S. president Bush as
signaling a clear commitment to the American agenda. McCormack also argues that 9/11
provided an opportunity for Japan to ask the Americans to prove their support for Japan’s
foreign policy toward North Korea. McCormack’s “Koizumi's Japan in Bush’s World:
After 9/11,” demonstrates Koizumi’s intentions to “bask in the glow” of American
patronage.

16

Sarah Anderson, Phyllis Bennis, and John Cavanagh, “Coalition of the Willing,” p. 7.

McCormack: Koizum’s Japan in Bush’s World

36

Koizumi’s Japan in Bush’s World: After 9/11
Gavan McCormack
December 10, 2004
http://apjjf.org/-Gavan-McCormack/2111/article.html
1. The "Trustworthy Ally"
Half a century ago, General Douglas MacArthur, proconsul in the US occupation, wasacclaimed as a benevolent liberator even while patronizing the Japanese people, whom
he described soon after leaving Japan as "12-year old children." Today, proconsuls from
Washington fly regularly in to Tokyo to inspect and instruct, as if Japan were aperipheral dependency, even though its economy now is roughly equal in scale to thoseof Germany, France and Britain combined. Japan's leadership basks in the glow of such
patronage, seemingly satisfied with the role of satrap, for all the world like the one-timeleaders of East European satellite states in the Soviet empire.
At the first meeting, in June 2001, between Koizumi and US President George W. Bush,
Koizumi could be seen grinning with delight from his seat on the presidential golf cart.
In May 2003 he became only the fifth national leader (following Russia, Britain,
Australia and Spain) to be honored with an overnight visit to the presidential ranch in
Crawford, Texas, and at the 2004 Sea Island G8 summit he is to be seen standing at
Bush's right hand. Japanese commentators remark that not since the days of "Ron-Yasu"
familiarity between Ronald Reagan and Nakasone Yasuhiro has the relationshipbetween the leaders of the two countries been so close. If one thing seems certain about
Koizumi's politics it is that he would never risk offending Bush's Washington by taking
a "French" or "German" stance on major issues. Yet neither does he seek or expect to betaken into Washington's councils in the manner of Blair. It may well be that nowhere in
the world, including London, does Bush have so faithful a follower.
Although the relationship is close, that does not necessarily mean that Koizumi, orJapan, really wanted to go to war against Iraq or that it supports the US position on
Palestine; for Japan under Koizumi North Korea is the key factor. In February 2004, hedeclared that it was of overwhelming importance for Japan to show that it was a"trustworthy ally," because (as he put it) if ever Japan were to come under attack it
would be the US, not the UN or any other country, that would come to its aid.1 When hedeclared support for the US-led war on Iraq in March 2003, and when he sent Japaneseforces to aid the occupation
In January 2004, it was not Iraq that was in the Japanese sights so much as North
Korea.2 In 2004, Spain, Honduras, the Dominican Republic and Kazakhstan announced
their intention to withdraw from Iraq, South Korea canceled plans to send several
thousand troops to the northern city of Kirkuk because of deteriorating security, andPoland's president expressed anger at the US and British deception on which the war
was based and suggested an apology was in order. Even in the US and Britain society
was turning against the war. In Japan, however, once Japanese troops were sent toJapan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

37

occupy a tiny sliver of Iraqi territory support for them rose steadily. Alone of politicalleaders who supported the war, Koizumi's domestic support remained strong and it
seemed he might escape without serious political consequences.
However, Koizumi is a paradoxical, unpredictable, sometimes cantankerous leader,whose political instincts pull him in different directions. While taking steps to lockJapan more firmly into dependence within a US-dominated global order, using hostility
for North Korea as the fulcrum, he has also taken significant steps towards resolving
that very North Korean issue. For him to accomplish that, or even to move significantly
towards it, would be to shake the frame of US hegemony over Japan and by extension in
East Asia generally. It is that contradiction that makes Koizumi, otherwise a showy but
shallow politician with a proclivity for neo-nationalist gestures such as ritual visits to
Yasukuni shrine, interesting. This paper analyses the circumstances surrounding thetroop dispatch and the hostage crisis in Iraq and the recent moves between Tokyo andPyongyang, in the context of the world's most important if least understood,
relationship, that between its two greatest economic powers.
2. From "Showing the Flag" to "Boots on the Ground"
The US-Japan relationship is often described, especially on ceremonial occasions, as"second to none" in importance. America has "no closer ally" as George W. Bush put it in
his message to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the opening of relations in July
2004.3 Japan's level of integration with the United States on military and strategic andeconomic matters is probably greater than that of any other country except possibly
Great Britain, and with even less pretence to equality in the relationship. The process ofredrawing, and thereby tightening, the US-Japan relationship for the post-Cold War era
was carried forward quietly under the Clinton presidency. The security "Guidelines"
agreed in 1997 and given legislative effect in 1999 confirmed Japan's positive
cooperation in the event of any future regional crisis (with the Korean peninsula
especially in mind). After 9/11, however, US demands escalated steadily. Bluntly
advised by Richard Armitage, Deputy US Secretary of State, to pull its head out of thesand and make sure the Rising Sun flag was visible in the Afghanistan war,4 Japan
adopted a Terror Special Measures Law and sent a substantial part of its Maritime Self
Defense Forces (MSDF), including an Aegis-class destroyer, to the Indian Ocean to aid
and refuel the allied forces.
In March 2003, Koizumi promised "unconditional" support for the coming war in Iraq,
ignoring the lack of a UN warrant. Since then, he has repeatedly echoed the
Washington-London line on weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and to this day (mid2004) has yet to concede that he was misled and mistaken. Japan has scarcely begun toaddress the implications of the fact that the war might have been designed primarily toremove a troublesome independent-minded, secular despot who challenged Israeli
domination and US plans for the future of the region, including its oil resources.
From early April 2003, once the war proper was over, Koizumi came under heavypressure to make good his promise of unconditional support by putting Japanese "boots

McCormack: Koizumi’s Japan in Bush’s World38

on the ground" in Iraq. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is believed to havebeen the source of the "boots" phrase, but the message was conveyed to Tokyo by
multiple routes.5 Richard Armitage, Deputy secretary of State and a very regular visitor
to Tokyo, prefers baseball images and so put it this way: "It is about time that Japan
should quit paying to see the game, and get down to the baseball diamond."6At their tête-à-tête in Texas in May, Koizumi gave Bush his "heart to heart" (ishindenshin) promise to send the "boots" required. He also pledged to speed up the review
of Missile Defense, a project dear to the hearts of Bush and his associates and likely toaffect Japan's regional and global position profoundly in future years. In return, for the
first time, Bush declared his own "unconditional" support for the Japanese position on
the families of the North Korean abductees -- that North Korea would have to satisfy
Japanese demands before there could be any easing of sanctions. It was, as a senior
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) official admitted, a deal: Japanese forces to Iraq in
exchange for US support for Japan's position on North Korean issues.7 While formal
diplomatic statements referred to weapons of mass destruction and, later, the cause of
Iraqi democracy, in the Japanese domestic political context the key point was that
troops had to be sent to Iraq because the US forces in Japan were essential to defence
against North Korea.
Upon return to Japan, however, when Koizumi dithered in the face of domestic
opposition, an anonymous Defense Department spokesman put the message bluntly to
his Japanese counterpart: "Why don't you shape up?"8 Japan's special ambassador to
the Middle East, Arima Tatsuo, was admonished by Armitage: "Don't try to back off."[9]In due course, the Iraq Special Measures Law was adopted in July, and in December
2003 Koizumi issued orders for units of all three (Air, Sea, and Ground) of Japan's SelfDefense Forces to leave for Iraq. The advance guard, a 600-strong SDF unit flew out in
mid-January.
Koizumi railroaded the troop dispatch through against a reluctant parliament andpeople. When the decision was ratified in the House of Representatives at the end ofJanuary, the government relied on a special investigative mission to Iraq that reported
that security problems were minimal and the SDF could safely go to Samawah. It latertranspired, however, that this report had been drafted by bureaucrats even before thegroup left Tokyo in mid-September, and that it had been further edited before being
submitted to the Diet in January by the deletion of details that might have soundednegative.10
Still, the opposition in the parliament and the country was such that the vote had to be
postponed till after midnight, when the chamber was boycotted en masse not only by
the main opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan, which protested that the law
was unconstitutional, but even by some of the most influential members of the ruling
LDP itself, including three of the top figures in the party, the former head of its policy
planning committee, Kamei Shizuka and two former Secretaries-General, Kato Koichi
and Koga Makoto. None of them accepted Koizumi's justification for the Iraq War.
Former posts and telecommunications minister and parliamentary vice-defense

Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

39

minister, Minowa Noboru, on 28 January 2004 launched an action in the Sapporo
District Court to have the troop dispatch declared unconstitutional.11 He too insisted
that that the SDF could not constitutionally or legally be sent to Iraq, and thatreconstruction and humanitarian aid could only be undertaken by the Ministry ofForeign Affairs.12 The Japanese ambassador to Lebanon, Amaki Naoto, wrote to thePrime Minister protesting that the troop dispatch would breach both the Japaneseconstitution and international law; for his pains he was summoned to Tokyo andperemptorily sacked.13
When David Kay, the former senior investigator in the search for Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction, concluded it was "highly unlikely" that there were any such weapons,
Koizumi, unshaken, told the Diet (25 November 2003): "I believe President Bush is rightand he is a good man."14 A Foreign Ministry official, evidently accustomed to faithfully
following the US line, remarked of the Kay Report: "It is like being betrayed and bitten
by a pet dog you trusted."15 In the world of the high diplomacy of the US-Japan
relationship, the intervention of truth and independence of mind was tantamount to theravings of a mad dog.
When he justified the dispatch by referring to Japan's reliance on the Middle East for 90
per cent of its oil supply and to Japan's responsibility to "international society" andIraq's need for humanitarian assistance, Koizumi was redefining "international society"and placing a peculiarly narrow construction on "humanitarian assistance." Until 2002,"international society" for Japan meant primarily the UN. In relation to Iraq, however,UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had criticized the US preemptive strike as a"fundamental challenge" to UN principles, the Security Council refused to endorse it,
and despite intensive lobbying Japan was one of less than forty of the General
Assembly's 191 countries that offered support of any kind to the invasion andoccupation. As for humanitarian assistance for Iraq, the need was indisputable, but theinsistence that the appropriate way for Japan to meet it was by sending its army (SelfDefense Forces), was open to serious question, both because of Japan's constitutional
strictures on anything to do with armed force and because of doubts over theappropriateness of sending a body of armed men to contribute to the national
reconstruction of Iraq.
Japan in Iraq
Till its participation in the British-American force in Iraq, Japan had enjoyed respect
throughout the Middle East as a non-Western power, neutral on the question of Israel
and Palestine, and constitutionally opposed to the use of force to resolve international
disputes. By joining the US-led coalition of the willing it squandered that resource,
implicitly inviting the hostile attention of the enemies of the US throughout the region.
Koizumi defended the dispatch by saying that the intervention would be confined tohumanitarian and reconstruction work, not using any force, and exclusively in "noncombat" areas. "I am sending the SDF," he said, "because there is no security problem ...
The security situation in Samawah is completely safe and there is no risk."16 His claim

McCormack: Koizumi’s Japan in Bush’s World40

was questionable in point of fact, given that 10,000 or more Iraqi civilians and hundredsof US soldiers had been killed since hostilities were formally declared at an end in May
2003. For the US authorities under whom the SDF served, all of Iraq was a combat zone,
and for Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz, even in March 2004 the war was "not overyet."17 In April 2004, at the time of the hostage crisis, Koizumi himself conceded that thesituation was so dangerous that Japan should not entertain any other presence in Iraq
than that of a well-armed military unit. As for Koizumi's argument that Samawah was a
non-combat zone in the sense that there were no hostilities being conducted by "statesor quasi-state organizations," this was simply a Japanese casuistry, worthy to rank withthe lies and manipulations practiced in the US and elsewhere to justify the war.
Local Iraqi residents seemed generally welcoming of the Japanese troops, believing atleast that Japanese occupation was preferable to American. However, while hoping theJapanese soldiers would bring in their train jobs, clean water, electricity, better medical
facilities and better roads, they may well have suspected that such things were only
likely to be delivered under an independent, national Iraqi plan for reconstruction.
Japanese forces were playing a subordinate role in an occupation that had no plan tocreate such a body. The SDF was to function in a tiny area (roughly one per cent) of thecountry, with a numerically insignificant force (550 soldiers), two thirds of whom weredevoted to security or administration. The troops were housed in "one of the mostformidable military camps planet earth has ever seen," an isolated fortress, securebehind its own moat and barricades, that was also a luxury compound with its own
karaoke bar, massage parlor and gymnasium.18 They would supply 80 tons of fresh
water daily to 16,000 people, and give assistance to local schools and hospitals. These
highly localized and limited benefits would come at enormous cost, approximately 40
billion yen ($360 million) to mid-2004. The facilities themselves were of course
enormously expensive, and the troops were being paid a "danger money" fee of 30,000
yen ($275) per day. By contrast, the French NGO Agency for Technical Cooperation andDevelopment (ACTED) was providing services in gas, water, health and sanitation(including 550 tons of fresh water daily), to 100,000 people in Al-Muthanna Province
for a cost of just over half a million dollars (approximately 60 million yen) per year.
Where the NGO operation was low cost, low profile and high impact, the money goingmostly on rental for tankers and virtually all the labor being provided by local Iraqis,
the SDF operation was high cost, high profile and low impact.19 It was certainly not amodel that could be expanded or reproduced anywhere else but one in which political
purpose trumped economic sense or humanitarianism.
From April, the SDF men were often confined to base, protected by a combination of
Dutch forces, American mercenaries and local troops, their humanitarian mission
drastically curtailed. It was possible to glimpse something of a behind-the-scenes
bureaucratic struggle over these issues within the Japanese government when the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that it would take over the funding of the French
NGO operation, i.e. it would provide about 7 times as much water for Iraq as the SDF
had at a fraction the cost.
In June, when an Iraqi provisional administration was installed in accordance with

Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

41

UNSC 1546, Koizumi was unstinting in his praise for the US, describing the newresolution as "a victory for America's righteous cause." He was also quick to promisethat the Japanese troop commitment would continue under the Multinational Force. He
made the pledge, however, not to the new government but directly to President Bush,
without consulting either his own or the new Iraqi government or the parliament inTokyo. Strictly speaking participation in any multinational force was constitutionallyforbidden, so Koizumi stressed that it was subject to four conditions, which, he said, hadbeen accepted by US and British authorities (all that counted, he implied): non-use offorce, confinement to non-combat areas, adherence to constitutional limits, andoperation under Japanese command.20 The words "unified command," clear in both theresolution itself and Secretary Colin Powell's accompanying letter to the Security
Council, were rendered not by the precise Japanese equivalent but by a vague,
unfamiliar and equivocal term, meaning something rather different, a joint command
headquarters.21
Where official Japan supported war and occupation, NGOs and much of Japan's civilsociety opposed it and tried to address humanitarian concerns in a completely different
way. As the 500-odd soldiers in their seemingly impregnable, five-star encampment
maintained their supply of water to Samawah but otherwise remained mostly invisible,
three young Japanese were taken hostage in April 2004, one a volunteer returning to
Baghdad to resume work with abandoned street children, another a student
investigating and publicizing the health effects of depleted uranium, and the third ajournalist committed to photographing and making known to the world the struggle
and sufferings of the Iraqi people. Held for a week, 7th to 15th April, they were in due
course released through the good offices of the Islamic Clerics Association, and a second
group, two journalists seized on 14th April, was released three days later.22 These
representatives of Japanese civil society, and their families, even before their release,became victims of a government and media campaign to legitimize the official SDF
mission and to discredit them as reckless and irresponsible. Their detention may evenhave been prolonged by Koizumi's use of the term "terrorists" to describe their captors,
or Foreign Minister Kawaguchi's television message (broadcast on Al Jazeera) whichcalled for the release of the abductees but argued that they, and the SDF, were engaged
in the same, humanitarian mission. Japan's official stance, and its civil society's stance,
contrasted sharply. The families and support movement of the abducted desperately
insisted on that difference even as the government sought to blur it in order to try tolegitimize the SDF operation.
During the detention crisis, government and major media groups treated families andsupport groups coldly and with suspicion. Prime Minister Koizumi refused to meetthem. As the national media, taking its cue from government ministers andspokespersons, took up the cry of "irresponsibility," "recklessness," and causing Japan
trouble and expense, the telephones, faxes and home pages of the abductee families
were filled with abusive and intimidating messages. Responsibility for their plight was
shifted onto the victims, and attention directed away from the nature of the occupationthat official Japan supported. By the time the first group of three abductees returned toJapan, the barrage of hostile criticism compounded, if it did not actually cause them toMcCormack: Koizumi’s Japan in Bush’s World

42

fall into, a state of shock, so that they arrived home apologetic, exhausted, humiliated,distraught, and, apart from mumbled words of apology, silent.
Although the idealistic NGO volunteers and journalists were pilloried, it was they whowere striving to put into practice the principles of the constitution, specifically its
rejection of the role of armed force in resolving international disputes, while Koizumi as
Prime Minister was actively subverting it. NGO spokespersons since these incidents
report their security diminished, and Japan's moral standing as a country of peacesquandered, by the dispatch of the Japanese army (as Iraqis saw the SDF).23
Constitution, Common Sense, and International Contribution
Japan shares with Costa Rica an unusual constitutional commitment to pacifism. Its
Article 9 renounces the threat or use of force as an instrument of settling international
disputes and forbids the possession of "land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war
potential." The ink had scarcely dried on this document, however, before the US
government regretted it and began to press for it to be rescinded so that Japanese
troops could be deployed in "free world" causes.24 From its foundation in 1955, theruling LDP committed itself to the American goal of deletion of this troublesome clause.
Unable during the Cold War to muster sufficient political or popular support, it adopted
a convoluted, extra-constitutional position: that Article 9 could not have been intended
to cancel the country's inherent right of self-defense and therefore the Self-Defense
Forces (SDF), established in 1954, were legitimate regardless of what the constitution
said, as the minimum necessary force "to protect the peace and independence of Japanagainst direct or indirect threat."25 The SDF therefore exists without constitutional
warrant, on the basis of this higher principle, something akin to natural law. On thisground, and on this ground alone, the Japanese public slowly accepted the compatibilityof the SDF with the constitution.
During the Cold War, even the most reactionary of Prime Ministers agreed it would be"absolutely impossible" for the SDF ever to function outside Japan.26 In 1992, however,a Peace Keeping Organization Law was adopted, followed by a series of laws to justify
SDF peacekeeping missions to post-conflict Cambodia, Mozambique, the Golan Heights,
and East Timor. Although confined to road-building or the construction and running of
hospitals and refugee camps, nevertheless these missions involved a steady widening
and loosening of the official interpretation of Article 9 in the sense that a force whose
only justification was the defense of Japan against direct or indirect threat wascommitted, however innocuously, to various global theatres. Following the September
11 attacks in the US, Japan sent a flotilla of 24 naval ships to the Indian Ocean, which indue course provided about one half of the fuel needs of the allied war force in the
Afghanistan War. In 2004, however, when the SDF marched off with substantial armed
force to a virtual war zone, it was entering uncharted constitutional waters. In taking
this major step, the Japanese government was not only flouting its own hitherto-heldinterpretation of its constitution but also lacked legal justification (a Security Council
resolution) or moral pretext (WMD). Koizumi's desire to prove "trustworthiness"
outweighed constitution, law, and morality.

Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

43

In insisting that the SDF must be sent to Iraq, Koizumi addressed the constitutional
problem by offering a new and unique interpretation of the preamble's pledge to"occupy an honored place in an international society striving for the preservation ofpeace," suggesting that this vague sentiment should take precedence over the specificclauses in the body of the text. It was an interpretation that left constitutional scholars
aghast.27 On the other hand he also argued that, in any case, the matter was notimportant, since constitutional difficulties were so much "theological quibble."28 Whatreally mattered was "common sense", something which he, as Prime Minister, wasuniquely qualified to offer. Koizumi's position is that "In the common sense terms of thepeople, the SDF is surely 'military force' ... if we talk in terms of principles rather than ofpretence ... the fact is that the constitution itself is out of step with internationalcommon sense."29 As he put it on another occasion, "The SDF is an army. ... It should becalled the [Japanese] National Army [Nihon kokugun]."30 When his own visit to
Yasukuni Shrine was held by a Fukuoka District court in April 2004 to beunconstitutional, Koizumi simply shrugged it off, saying he found it inexplicable (andimplying he would pay no attention).31 With his brusque appeal to common sense,
Koizumi dismisses a half-century of constitutional debate and rides roughshod over thebasic principle of the rule of law, yet in Washington, Canberra, and London, that is seen
as realism and evidence of positive engagement with the region and the world. Thiscasual manipulation of the constitution by the Prime Minister of the world's No 2
economic power has occasioned scarcely a murmur in Washington and London.
The history of post-1947 Japanese constitutionalism is replete with examples ofgovernments taking initiatives in the teeth of hostile public opinion and the judgmentsof constitutional experts, creating and justifying the possession of armed force on an
exclusively self-defense basis and then steadily expanding its role, winning over
opposition simply through fait accompli, with each new step eroding the constitutional
principle of Article Nine.32 None, however, had been so swift and far-reaching as thetransformation that occurred in Japan in 2003-4.
In Iraq, for the first time in 60 years Japan committed itself, albeit in a subordinate andnon-combat role, to an illegal and aggressive war. The restraints that had blocked the
SDF, first from existence, then from any role outside Japan, then from any role inhostilities outside Japan, were one-by-one swept aside, till only the finest of lines
separated it from participation in hostilities. Preying on deep-seated fear of andhostility toward North Korea, Koizumi went far toward accomplishing what previous
conservative leaders had only dreamed of doing: setting aside 40 years of constitutional
principle and transforming the SDF into a de facto regular army.33
Koizumi's skill in managing public opinion was remarkable. The decision to send the
SDF to Iraq was taken in the teeth of strong popular opposition, running in early to mid2003 at 70 to 80 per cent, but by early 2004 he had successfully turned that around, sothat a small but absolute majority was in favor.34 Constitutional qualms seem to havebeen overcome by a flood of patriotic sentiment. Koizumi described the SDF men andwomen as the "pride of their families, the pride of Japan and the pride of the Japanese

McCormack: Koizumi’s Japan in Bush’s World44

people," and the media cooperated enthusiastically in portraying the hometown boys
(and some girls) in boots as heroes, lavishing attention on their every move: training in
Hokkaido's snow for the Iraq desert, performing rituals of regimental colors,
farewelling their tearful families and crowds of flag-waving supporters. Colonel Bansho
Koichiro, the SDF commander, became a media favorite for his rough, homespun
sincerity and was to be seen day after day giving friendly speeches in halting Arabic,
discussing how to revive the local hospital, or presenting gift sheep to a local
community. Koizumi's gamble, it seemed, had paid off, at least in the short run.
3. Billions
Since the end of the Cold War Japan has contributed a staggering sum in subsidies forthe military activities of the US global empire. As the US economy strains under theburden of chronic deficits, military and empire-related spending, and huge tax cuts, andas other nations that bore substantial portions of the costs of the 1991 Gulf War decline
to support the present wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Japanese aid grows in importance.
Washington needs billions as well as boots.
In less than three years since September 11, Japan paid around $30 billion (3.3 trillion
yen) in "support" costs for the US bases in Japan, including, in 2003 alone, almost $6
billion (638 billion yen) for the bases that most Okinawan people would dearly love to
be rid of.35 It was also paying huge sums as part of its so-called" "rear-support" for theanti-terror coalition, including meeting the oil needs of allied ships in the Persian Gulf.36
In addition, the Japanese government subsidy for the 39,691 US troops stationed inJapan amounts to around $150,000 per head every year.37 On top of that ongoingcommitment it has also promised to build for the US Marines a brand-new base inwaters of northern Okinawa likely to cost at least an additional one trillion yen ($9billion). Washington has no other ally in this league of open-pocket generosity.
Asked for additional aid for rebuilding Iraq, and told that "billions" was the appropriate
unit for consideration,38 Koizumi promised $5 billion, far in excess of any contribution
other than that of the US itself and about three times the sum levied from the whole ofEurope.39 Under further pressure from Washington the Japanese government agreed toforego recovery of a large part of the debt owed it by the government of Iraq.40 Japan isby far the largest creditor, owed just over $4 billion.41
Both Washington and Tokyo insist that such generosity is spontaneous. There iscertainly little evidence of any popular support for it, but it is fair to say that it istolerated in grudging recognition that such "taxes" are the price of trustworthiness andthe guarantee of US military backing in the event of a showdown with North Korea. On
the US side, however, the denial by a "Senior White House official" that the US president
would ever think of Japan as "just some ATM machine" was so bizarre as to suggest thatperhaps that might be precisely how he saw it.42
The same Japanese cooperativeness is evident in interventions in currency markets andin the scramble to oblige Washington by agreeing to the purchase of the Missile Defense

Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

45

system. During 2003 the Bank of Japan poured 20 trillion yen (ca $180 billion) into themarkets to try to prevent the dollar sliding or the yen appreciating.43 In 2004, theprocess accelerated, with an infusion of half that sum just in the first two months of theyear, the Bank of Japan was struggling mightily against an ebb-tide of weakening
demand for U.S. Treasuries, bonds and stocks to keep the dollar up and the yen down.44
The "benefit" in this is twofold: satisfying Washington's need to sustain a huge inflow offunds to offset its deficits (and maintain consumer demand) on the one hand, andkeeping Japan's manufactured exports competitive on the other. Early in 2004 the IMF
noted that, with its foreign debt levels heading towards 40 per cent of GDP, the US
deficit was "a significant risk" for the world,45 but nowhere was confidence in it higher,
and readiness to support it stronger, than in Tokyo.
Japan is both the world's greatest debtor and the holder of about half of its foreign
currency reserves. Those holdings, some $673 billion worth and held overwhelmingly
in US dollars, multiplied seven times in the decade from 1993.46 However, over thethree years to 2004 roughly $70 billion (almost 8 trillion yen) was written off their yen
value, and the eventual losses are likely to be much greater because they could not beliquidated without triggering a dollar collapse and few expect that the long-term trend
for the dollar is anywhere but down. Other countries, notably China, have begun tobalance their dollar holdings with Euros, but Japan shows no such inclination.
So far as missile defense is concerned, the "mature" alliance relationship requires ofJapan that, apart from getting its boots on the ground and its billions into circulation in
Washington, it should also install a "missile defense shield." The initial estimates called
for 500 billion yen ($4.5 billion) over five years but within a matter of months that had
almost doubled.47 The Rand Corporation in 2001 estimated that a basic system, capableof intercepting "only a few North Korean missiles," would cost approximately $20
billion, and a full coverage system more than the national defense budget.48 The Asahi
recently put a price tag of around 2 trillion yen ($18.5 billion) on such a system.49 It isbound anyway to be fabulously expensive, to integrate Japan ever more firmly under
Pentagon control, to stir China's distrust, and possibly provoke a regional missile race.
Whether it would work is unknown. The record of the PAC-2 missile system, now
replaced by PAC-3, during the Gulf War in 1991 was not encouraging: the Pentagon
initially claimed a success rate of 96 per cent for 198 missiles fired, but whenchallenged revised it down to 9 per cent.50 The best scientific and military opinion
seems to be that the present system is unproven, i.e. it might or might not work,51 but
even if it works the protection would be confined to places within 15 kilometers radiusof the PAC-3 batteries. The capital and major (US) base complexes might be protected,
but much of Japan would not be.52
Koizumi's Crawford ranch commitments -- the boots, the billions, and the Patriots -was a high price to pay for his ride on the presidential golf cart and his en suite room at
the presidential ranch.
The "global economic revival" is precariously poised atop towering twin peaks ofJapanese and American debt. The seriously ill Japanese economy takes every possible

McCormack: Koizumi’s Japan in Bush’s World46

step to prop up the equally ailing US economy, pouring Japanese savings into the blackhole of American illiquidity in order to subsidize the US global empire underconstruction, fund the debt, and finance the over-consumption.53 The debt in the twocountries is of similar size, approximately $7 to $8 trillion by most estimates (720trillion yen for Japan, according to OECD, but estimated to be around one quadrillion
yen, $9 trillion plus, if the debts of government instrumentalities are included).54 The
lower figure still amounts to around 150 per cent of GDP, highest in the OECD, if not inmodern history.55
Even Japan's gross national debt owes much to the peculiarities of the relationship with
the US. During the trade and exchange disputes of the 1980s, the US insisted that Japan
prime its pump and expand domestic demand. This set off a fantastic boondoggle indebt-funded public works whose full details are only slowly coming to light. Early in2004 it was revealed that the Ministry of Public Health and Welfare's welfare enterprise,"Greenpia," had invested public pension funds so recklessly, especially since the 1980s,
in a proliferation of public and concert halls, sports and recreation facilities, etc, thatlosses were estimated at around 3 trillion yen ($27 billion).56 A full-scale crisis erupted
as the national Diet struggled simultaneously to cover up the scale of the disaster,reassure those with pension entitlements, and adjust to the prodigious losses of public
wealth by adoption of a new Pension Law that would increase contributions and reduce
benefits. Several key political figures, including the leader of the opposition, resigned
when forced to admit that they had neglected to pay their premiums. Koizumi initiallyinsisted that he had acted with perfect propriety, but in due course conceded that he
too had not bothered paying the (compulsory) premiums for nearly three years. He
dismissed it, however, as a trivial matter that happened a long time ago (around 1970).
When pressed to explain his delinquency, while for nearly three years on the payroll of
a company for which he did no work, he replied with the words of a popular song:"there are many different ways of living," adding "there are also many different kinds ofcompanies, and different kinds of employees."57 Responsibility for this disaster canscarcely be laid directly at the American door, but it was nevertheless the desperateattempts to prime the Japanese pump, taken at US insistence, that fed the corrupt,
collusive public works system. Koizumi inherited the system and by his policies helped
it cover up its criminality and shift the losses onto the public. He added substantially to
Japan's debt mountain but his "reform" agenda offered no clue as to how he would everreduce it.
Some commentators think that the worst of Japan's stagnant, post-bubble era might
now be over, that the decline was temporary and is about to yield to a blaze of new
growth, industrial refinement, and prosperity, buoyed in part by China's boom.58 They
point to the continuing, undimmed gloss and vibrancy of Japan's cities, the capacity to
produce high-quality goods and to establish global trends in consumption, fashion andculture. Yet the country's bubble-era excess liquidity has long evaporated. Bad debt,
chronic unemployment (and under-employment), bankruptcies, the virtual or actual
nationalization of major banks,59 social despair in the country's peripheries, gloom andanxiety for the future, especially for the public welfare and pension systems, evenamong the supposedly comfortably employed middle class, persist.60 The 2004 BudgetJapan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

47

projects tax revenues of just under 42 trillion yen and expenditure of 82 trillion yen: inother words nearly 45 per cent is dependent on bonds, or borrowing.61 The prospect is
one of falling population, spending cuts and tax increases. Education, welfare andoverseas aid costs are being shaved, small and medium-sized business cut loose to fendwith "market forces."
While demonstrating "faithfulness" to Washington, Koizumi's policies amount toplundering the savings of past generations and the patrimony of unborn ones in thevain pursuit of growth at all cost, raising a Mt Fuji of debt over the land.62 Elected in2000 as a radical reformer prepared if necessary to destroy his party in order torevitalize the country, Koizumi in the event revitalized party rather than country. Some
well-informed analysts accuse him of leading the country to destruction.63
4. Becoming a "Great Britain"
Even as the Bush regime faced declining support domestically and increasing isolationinternationally,64 Japan sent its armed forces to support US operations in an explosive
part of the world in whose historic disputes it hitherto had no role and where it had no
enemies. It was also paying generously to subsidize the US military presence in East
Asia, to fund the wars and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, and to support the
dollar. These were merely installments, however, on the sort of comprehensive
reorganization of the Japanese state that the restructured US-Japan relationship callsfor. Japan is expected to revise its constitution, to expand its defense horizon in order tosupport "coalition" operations as a fully-fledged NATO-style partner, and to become the"Britain of the Far East."65
There was no question that Japan in the early 21st century possessed substantial
military force. Its military expenditure was second only to the United States, its army
bigger than either the British or French, its navy the 5th largest in the world (after the
US, Russia, China and the UK), and its air force twelfth largest in the world and larger
than Israel's. Its continual equipment upgrading, and its steady projection over morethan a decade onto the international stage in UN operations, were such that it was
plainly capable of playing a major regional or global military role if it so chose.
Washington was now saying: it is time to make that choice.
The Japanese people are slow to grasp the way that the character of the US-Japan
relationship has been transformed since the end of the Cold War and particularly since
9/11. Although the relationship is conventionally represented as one of Japan"benefiting" from shelter under a US umbrella, the US no longer just "protects" Japan(by which is meant maintaining a chain of bases centered on Okinawa through which
American power is projected throughout Asia) but it insists that Japan must "continue
to rely on US protection," and that any attempt to substitute for that reliance an ententewith China (or, more broadly, any Asia in which the centrality of the US was notrecognized) would "deal a fatal blow to U.S. political and military influence in East
Asia."66 The thought that Japan might one day become the "Japan of the Far East" rather
than the "Britain of the Far East," is a nightmare comparable in the eyes of the Bush

McCormack: Koizumi’s Japan in Bush’s World

48

administration, if not worse than, 9/11.
American demands became steadily more importunate as the post 9/11 world order
evolved. While the US would withdraw some of its regional East Asian-based forces (orsend them directly to Iraq), the overall deployment pattern was being changed so thatthey could henceforth be deployed more readily not just in the "Far East" as prescribedin the Joint Security Treaty (Article 6) but throughout the "arc of instability" from Korea
to Africa. Some command units, including the US Army's 1 Corps HQ, were designated
for relocation from the US mainland to camps in Japan. Already de facto the Japan-based
US forces were being deployed directly to the Indian Ocean and Iraq, but the Bushadministration's demand meant that the Joint Security Law would have to be revised togive formal, legal recognition to the transformed character of the alliance. This would
be the biggest revision of the entire post-war US-Japan security arrangements, andKoizumi was clearly reluctant to promote to the Japanese electorate what amounted tothe active, comprehensive, and subordinate cooperation in the establishment of US
Asian and global hegemony. Through 2004, the Japanese government procrastinated, togrowing US irritation.67 The crash of a US military helicopter onto a university building
in Okinawa on 13 August also highlighted the fact that, eight years after the US-Japanagreement on return of the Futenma (Marine Corps) base facilities "within "five toseven years," the Japanese government had only just begun the survey of the designatedrelocation site. It would be up to a decade before any airport could be built and the basetransferred to this coral reef site in northern Okinawa, and Okinawan opinion was, ifanything, hardening against the idea.
Official Japan, and most of the media, concentrates its attention on Japan's role in the
post-9/11 world around the Self Defense Force commitment, but is reluctant to address
the question of Japanese responsibility for what happens in the totality of the system it
thereby supports. As the first anniversary of the Iraq war passed in spring 2004, theAmerican-led occupation of Iraq was increasingly mired in violence, its legitimacy intatters. Casualties mounted, especially in the massacre of hundreds of civilians, many ofthem women and children, in Fallujah. Muslim holy places were attacked, the abuse andtorture of prisoners became an international scandal, and as opposition began tocoalesce into a national resistance, the unwieldy international coalition unraveled. By
the time the US Administrator, Paul Bremer, stepped aside on 28 June, leaving his handpicked Iraqi provisional government comprised of favored American exiles with noindigenous base in place, the US-led occupation was unraveling in a series of scandals
and atrocities. The unconditional alliance relationship meant commitment to a system
responsible for torture and assassination, and for indiscriminate attacks on civilian andreligious targets, especially as US tactics and strategy become gradually "Israeli-ized,"68
and to preemptive war. The Japanese government has no comment on the US-led
assault on Fallujah, but when the Israeli government assassinated the Palestinian
Hamas leader Abdelaziz Rantissi on 18 April 2004, and the United States showed its
understanding, even the Japanese Foreign Minister expressed polite dismay. Japan's
own SDF must change in character too to belong to the same system. If the US has its
way, Japan must learn to defy the collective will of humanity for the abolition of nuclear
weapons because it is required to accept the maintenance of a nuclear weapon-basedJapan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

49

strategy of global hegemony and extension of that strategy to space. Collective security
comes to mean for Japan, as for Britain, Japanese troops fighting shoulder-to shoulder
with Americans and British in future Afghanistans and Iraqs in the service of American
designs. It also implies the priority to the requirements of collective security over thoseof international law and institutions.
Watching the Koizumi administration apparently scrambling to comply with thevarious demands in 2003, Deputy Secretary Armitage remarked that the US
government was "thrilled" that Japan was not "sitting in the stands any more" but hadcome out as "a player on the playing field."69 While still pressing Japan to undertake
outright constitutional revision, he suggested that, as a minimalist alternative it might
be enough for the Cabinet Legislative Bureau to adopt a "flexible" interpretation of theexisting words, i.e. revise it without going to the trouble of formal revision.70 The
situation was fluid, however, and the implications for Japan so immense that, less than ayear later, he was profoundly pessimistic, seeing the dialogue over the US force
restructuring as going nowhere and the relationship as resembling a train-wreck.71
If Japan were indeed to become what Armitage describes as a "player," there can be no
mistake as to who would be the captain and coach of its team and no doubting thedeadly seriousness of the game. The head of the LDP's Policy Research Council, Kyuma
Fumio, asked in February 2003 about Japan's position as war with Iraq loomed, said, "I
think it [Japan] has no choice. After all, it is like an American state."[72] In similar vein,
the grand old man of the LDP, Gotoda Masaharu, in September 2004 referred to Japanas a "vassal state" of the US.73 Koizumi may slowly be coming to understand that his
own term "trustworthy ally" has similar import. The price of his commitments rises
steadily. Armitage made clear in another context, talking to an Australian audience, thatwhat he means by "alliance" is a relationship in which: "Australian sons and daughters ...
would be willing to die to help defend the United States. That's what an alliancemeans."74 Armitage, or for that matter Koizumi, has yet to spell out that "bottom line"
for Japan.
5. North Korea: An Axis of Change?
With the Iraqi sector of the "Axis of Evil" disposed of, in a fashion, in 2003, the focus
shifted to North Korea. Although Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. North Korea,
by most accounts including its own, either had or was in the process of gaining them.
How to deal with it became a crucial, perhaps the crucial aspect of Japanese foreign
policy and the US-Japan relationship.
North Korea exercises a powerful hold over the Japanese imagination. An astonishing
600 books about it have been published in the past decade, the overwhelming majorityof them hostile. One comic-book account of Kim Jong Il as violent, bloodthirsty anddepraved, published in August 2003, sold half a million copies in its first few months,
probably more than all the other books in all languages ever written about North Korea.
The peculiar wave of Japanese fear and hatred for North Korea not only underpinned
the decisions on Iraq but also played, and continues to play, a large role in theMcCormack: Koizumi’s Japan in Bush’s World50transformation of Japan's security thinking in general. Without North Korea, it would
most likely have been impossible to pass the raft of 13 bills aimed at preparing Japanfor the contingency of war that was adopted in 2003-4. Such comprehensive"contingency" legislation had been on the wish list of conservative governments
throughout the Cold War but was always blocked by socialist and communist
opposition. Now it was able to pass, with little debate and the support of around 80 per
cent of Diet members. Some of the new laws were explicitly designed with North Korea
in mind: authorizing interdiction of suspect shipping or the blocking of foreignexchange transactions or exclusion of ships of a designated country from entering
Japanese ports. Others spelled out special emergency powers, enabling the Prime
Minister to impose a virtual martial law regime and compel compliance by local
authorities and citizens if he deemed it necessary.75 Japan was alone among industrial
democracies in devoting this meticulous attention to the preparation for war. North
Korea is very much on the Japanese mind.
Koizumi both benefits from and plays his part in feeding the national paranoia. His
controversial Yasukuni visits and ambiguous statements about Japan's militaristic pastconfirm his nationalism, while his devotion to George Bush shows a reassuring (toWashington) alliance-orientation. However, this same Koizumi has also adopted thecause of normalization of relations with North Korea as his major political commitment,
alone of world political leaders visiting Kim Jong Il twice, on his own initiative and withat best the reluctant consent of Washington. He could do this with impunity because his
fidelity to Washington seemed beyond doubt and because (from January 2004) theboots of the Japanese troops were firmly planted on the ground in Iraq and multi-billion
dollar Japanese financial support was propping up the Bush world. Yet on this issue
Koizumi was plainly flying his own kite.
Alone among Western leaders, he has visited North Korean leader Kim Jong Il twice(2002 and 2004), after their second meeting declaring Kim mild-mannered andcheerful," "very smart," and "quick to make jokes"76 -- in other words someone to dobusiness with. Koizumi's pledge to restore trust between Japan and North Korea, so that
"abnormal relations can be normalized, hostile relations turned to friendly relations,and confrontation to cooperation,"77 and to strive to normalize relations within his
remaining two years of office, if possible within a single year,78 contrasted sharply withthe view of George W. Bush, who has declared that he "loathes" Kim and finds him"evil," or of Vice-President Cheney, who says that "you do not negotiate with evil, youdefeat it."79 In his talks with Kim Jong Il Koizumi seems to have ignored the official US
position of CVID (complete, verifiable, irreversible disarmament), indeed, afterwards hesounded rather like Kim Jong Il's messenger, pressing the Dear Leader's suit for directtalks with the US president. With Japan's voice added to the Chinese, Russian and South
Korean calls for a realistic policy to try to solve the North Korean question, the US had
no choice but to abandon its hard line stance and for the first time present elements of a"roadmap" for settlement. The alternative was unthinkable: the US either sitting in aminority of one at the six-sided Beijing table or launching an attack. Koizumi's absolutefidelity on Iraq and other fronts earned him the freedom of maneuver on North Korea.

Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

51

At root, Japan faces the same unresolved identity crisis that has persisted throughout its
modern history. Turning away from Asia in the late 19th century it has subsequently
contemplated return only as quintessential and superior, imperial Asian in the first halfof the 20th century or as the US-protected, ambiguous, "Western" state of its second
half (and beyond). So long as it preserves its psychological distance from its continental
and insular neighbors, Koizumi's Japan sees no option but to cling to the American
embrace, and that embrace in turn tightens, further blocking it from reconciliation andcooperation with Asia. It is the attitude described by no less a figure than Sakakibara
Eisuke, once known as "Mr. Yen" for his power over global currency markets, as"depraved ideological conservatism," under which Japan follows the US at all times andunder any circumstances.80 So long as Japan's "North Korea problem" remains
unresolved, its dependence on the US will continue.
Put differently, however, this means that if the North Korean problem were resolved(and Koizumi is determined to resolve it), then relations between Japan and North
Korea, and almost certainly likewise between North and South Korea, would benormalized. In other words, if peace broke out in East Asia the US military basepresence in South Korea and Japan would be difficult to sustain. With military tensions
drained from the region, the comprehensive incorporation of Japan within the US's
global hegemonic project would become difficult to justify. Japan could then turn its
attention towards its Asian neighbors, and shift its policy priority from being atrustworthy ally for the US to attending to its own multiple problems and becoming atrustworthy member of a future Asian commonwealth. Koizumi may not formulate theoptions in quite this manner, but as a conservative Japanese politician, with a
traditionalist heart, an eye to history and a desire to leave his mark on it, who could be
surprised that he also hears and is swayed by the siren song of Asia?
Till now, Koizumi's nationalism has been more pose than substance. Faithful to
Washington on almost all issues (with the important exception of North Korea), he has
to disguise himself with strong Japanese national accents and posture: the more heserves foreign purposes, the more important it is that he seem and sound nationalist.
Controversial gestures such as his visits to Yasukuni Shrine to pay his respects to thecountry's war dead -- most recently on New Year's Day 2004 -- are probably best seen,
not as a sign of a reviving nationalism but as an empty gesture to compensate for anabandoned one; the affirmation at abstract and purely symbolic level of what has been
repudiated in substance.81 Political and military subordination (to the US) require therhetoric and symbolism of nation.82 The nationalist pose disguises a form of neonationalism, sometimes described, therefore, as "comprador" or "parasite" or"dependent." However, resolution of the North Korean issue would transform thisequation.
Of course there are many obstacles to be overcome before Japan-North Korean
relations can be normalized. Yet Koizumi's personal encounters with Kim Jong Il seemto have persuaded him that they can work together and overcome them.
6. Asianism vs. Americanism

McCormack: Koizumi’s Japan in Bush’s World

52

The Japanese convention of serving the empire loyally and unquestioningly has been
sanctified by a half-century of evolution as an affluent imperial dependency. In the 20th
century, the benefits were large and the costs acceptable. However, the blueprints forthe 21st century call for a new level of subjugation. On Iraq, Japan toes the line, but on
North Korea, and on the fundamental reorganization of the joint security treaty, it
wavers. In the "Pyongyang Declaration" of September 2002, for the first time since theignominious collapse of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere in 1945, Japaneseand North Korean leaders joined in announcing shared commitment to the building of a
"North-East Asia" of peace and cooperation.83 Koizumi may be perfectly sincere in his
protestations of commitment to Washington on Iraq, but he is no less sincere in
dreaming the traditionalist Asian dream of Japanese conservatism. How long he, or
whoever might succeed him as Prime Minister, can contain the contradiction, pursuing
simultaneously Asianism and Americanism, remains to be seen.
In September 2004 Prime Minister Koizumi, addressing the United Nations in New York,called for Japan to be given a seat as a permanent member of the Security Council. It
was a curious spectacle. Before the same select representatives of the international
community, Secretary General Kofi Annan had just declared "illegal" the US-led invasionof Iraq that Japan had supported. Weeks before that, US Secretary of State Colin Powell
had declared that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, negating thejustification for the war and occupation on which Koizumi had long insisted. The crisisin the institution as the Secretary-General appealed for a return to the rule of law wasplain. A US "vassal state," or an additional US vote in the Council, seemed unlikely topoiont towards resolving it. Japan as an independent, constitutional peace state might
have played such a role, but Koizumi had spent his time as Prime Minister doing his
best to negate any such identity. Under mounting pressure, however, facing the US
demands for a transformed global security partnership, Koizumi's commitment was
looking increasingly equivocal. A Security Council seated Japan might be even lessamenable to US direction. Bush's response was therefore lukewarm.84
In the first half of the 20th century seven million Japanese soldiers marched off todistant battlefields, with shouts of "Banzai" ringing in their ears. Not one of them wasever sent, officially, on a mission of "aggression." Like Colonel Bansho, their task wasalways honorable: to resist the aggression of others (the Russo-Japanese War of 19045), to fulfill duties to allies (the Boxer China war of 1900 and World War One), to help
the people of a neighbor country (the Russian people against the Bolshevik revolution,
1918-1925), to defend Japanese lives and property against bandits, terrorists andwarlords and help construct an order of justice, peace and prosperity (in China andlater Southeast Asia from 1927 to 1945). Only long after the event did history render adifferent, much harsher judgment, one that many thoughtful Japanese, though not theruling party, have come to accept in essentials. Many Japanese scholars today gloomily
suspect that the same will be true of the Koizumi dispatch to Iraq.85 One influential
thinker describes the US operations in Iraq as an aggressive war comparable to Japan's
invasion of China that started in 1931. Both, he argued, were characterized by defianceJapan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

53

of international society and the belief that military superiority would be decisive. In his
view, Iraq was America's Manchukuo, a base from which to try to transform the Middle
East as Japan had once thought to transform the whole of China, and just as likely tomark the beginnings of imperial decline.86
However Japan addresses the dilemmas of regional and global policy, its foreign andsecurity posture has already shifted greatly around the issue of North Korea. The
constitution has steadily been emptied of content, the constraints of Article 9's pacifism
dismissed, and the country pushed in the direction of becoming a great power,
possessing and using force just like other great powers, albeit as what Gotoda calls a US
"vassal state." Paradoxically, when Koizumi reorganized his cabinet in September 2004
he insisted the key problem the country would faced during his (probable) remaining
two years of office was not the war in Iraq, the transformation of the alliance with theUS, relations with North Korea, the growing Japanese fiscal crisis, global poverty,
environmental degradation and climate change; instead, it was the task of privatizing
the Japanese Post Office.
Notes
1. "'Kokuren wa sukutte kurenei' shusho ga domei jushi riyu shimesu," Asahi shimbun,

28 January 2004.
2. Gavan McCormack, Target North Korea, New York, Nation Books, 2004, chapter 6.
3. "Bush lauds strength of Japan-U.S. alliance," Japan Times, 4 July 2004.
4. Armitage to Japanese ambassador in Washington, Yanai Shunji, on 15 September, and("head in sand") to Asahi shimbun on 5 October. ("Nihon no zenmen kanyo o motome,
jirai tekkyo mo kitai Bei kokumu fukuchokan," Asahi shimbun, 6 October, and in
Toshiaki Miura, "All or nothing, says U.S," Asahi shimbun, 9 October 2001.

5. "Iraq to jieitai, tokuso hoan wa tou," part 1, "Bei tsuiju to dokujisei no aida de," Asahi

shimbun, 25 June 2003.
6. "New era in defense policy wins praise from U.S," Yomiuri shimbun, 11 June 2003.
7. "'Kokuren yori Bei' no meian," Asahi shimbun, 19 March 2004.
8. "US demands Japan send troops to Iraq early," Kyodo, 15 September 2003.
9. "Jiki, chiiki de niten santen, taibei kyoryoku o yusen -- rikujo jieitai no Iraq haken,"Asahi shimbun, 9 October 2003.
10. Okamoto Susumu, "Donna kokkai ga haken o shonin shita ka," Sekai, April 2004, pp.

20-24, at p. 23.

McCormack: Koizumi’s Japan in Bush’s World54

11. Ex-posts minister sues over SDF dispatch to Iraq," Japan Times,30 January 2004.
12. Minowa Noboru, "Koizumi-kun, jieitai ho o benkyo shinasai," Shukan kinyobi, 13

February 2004, p. 15.
13. Amaki Naoto, "Jieitai Iraq haken wa torikeshi no tsukanai ayamari da," Sekai,

February 2004, pp. 60-65.
14. Quoted in Amaki, p. 64.

15. Reiji Yoshida, "Fukuda refuses to budge on WMD," Japan Times, 30 January 2004.
16. Quoted in Okamoto, p. 24.
17. "Online," PBS, 18 March 2004
18. J. Sean Curtin, "Japan's 'Fortress of Solitude' in Iraq -- plus karaoke," Asia Times, 19

February 2004.

19. Nao Shimoyachi, "SDF vs. NGO -- an Iraqi tale of cost effectiveness," Japan Times, 16

May 2004.
20. NHK television, 17 June 2004.
21. The UN term toitsu sareta shiki was rendered as togo sareta shireibu. "Kokusai koken

ga yugande iru," editorial, Asahi shimbun, 18 June 2004.

22. On 28 May, however, two other Japanese journalists were attacked and killed in theircar just south of Baghdad.
23. Kumaoka Michiya (of JOVC), "Hahei hantai messeji," Shukan kinyobi, 16 April 2004, p.

16.

24. For details: Glenn D. Hook and Gavan McCormack, Japan's Contested Constitution,

London, Routledge, 2001.

25. Article 3 of the Self-Defense Law, 1954.
26. Kishi Nobusuke, Prime Minister 1957-1960, addressing the lower house of thenational Diet on 30 September 1958. (Hayano Toru, "Kishi shusho mo idai na hato-ha
datta!?" Asahi shimbun, 14 January 2004.)
27. "Critics slam Koizumi's take on constitution," Japan Times, 13 December 2003.
28. Quoted by Maeda Tetsuo, Maeda et al, "Tohoku Ajia no anzen hosho to kempo 9-jo,"Sekai, October 2003, pp. 44-64, at p. 46.

Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

55

29. Koizumi speaking on 23 October 2001, quoted in Amaki Naoto, "Jieitai hitei wa

higenjitsuteki gomakashi wa genkai da," Ronza, February 2004, pp. 28-33, at p. 31.
30. Quoted in Asahi shimbun, 22 February 2004.
31. Quoted in "Horokobiru Koizumi seiji," Asahi shimbun, 17 July 2004.
32. Glenn D. Hook and Gavan McCormack, Japan's Contested Constitution, London and

New York, Routledge, 2001.

33. "Shusho, TV bangumi de 'jieitai o kokugun to aratameta ho ga ii'," Yomiuri shimbun, 2

November 2003.
34. Asahi polls reported opposition falling to 55 per cent in December, 48 per cent inJanuary when the SDF was dispatched, and 41 (vs 42 in favor) in March. Yomiuri found
53 per cent in favor of dispatch by January, and 58 by February. Mainichi found a low of
16 per cent pro-dispatch rising to a high of 50 per cent by March 2004. (Asahi shimbun,
23 February and 21 March, 2004; Yomiuri shimbun, 27 February 2004; Mainichi
shimbun, 8 March 2004).
35. See table at Maeda Hisao, "2004 nendo boei yosanan o kiru," Gunshuku mondai shiryo,

April 2004, pp. 40-47, at p. 47.

36. Terashima Jitsuro, "21 seiki Nihon ginko no kosoryoku Iraq senso o koete," Ronso,

January 2004, pp. 20-27, at p. 24 puts the figure of 10 trillion (ca $90 billion) on Japan's
post September 11 "rear support". However, the source of the figure is not clear.
37. Maeda, p. 47.
38. "Bei -- Iraq shiensaku ni shai," Asahi shimbun, 18 October 2003.
39. Berkofsky (op. cit.) refers to a recent World Bank estimate that Japan might end up

paying up to 30 billion US dollars by 2010.

40. "Japan considers waiving half of Iraq's $7 billion debt," Kyodo, 5 March 2004.
41. "Iraku saimu, susumanu sakugen," Asahi shimbun, 11 June 2004.
42. Takao Hishinuma and Eiji Hirose, "US official says Japan 'not just some ATM'," Daily

Yomiuri Online, 10 October 2003.

43. "Kawase shijo, doru-yasu tsuzuku mitoshi, nebukai 'futago no akaji'," Asahi shimbun,

31 December 2003.

44. "Kawase kainyu 3 cho 3420 oku en -- 2 gatsu," Asahi shimbun, 28 February 2004.

McCormack: Koizumi’s Japan in Bush’s World56

45. Matt Wade, "Global fears as US goes into the red," Sydney Morning Herald, 9 January

2004.

46. Fukuda Kunio, "Busshu no senso to keizai hatan," Gunshuku mondai shiryo, April

2004, pp. 22-27, at p. 27.

47. Handa Shigeru, "Misairu boei tonyu giman o abaku," Gendai, March 2004, pp. 70-79,

at pp. 73, 77.
48. Michael Swaine, Rachel Swanger, Takashi Kawakami Japan and Ballistic Missile

Defense, Rand Corporation, 2001, p. 67.

49. "Misairu boei e Nihon kasoku," Asahi shimbun, 18 September 2003 and "North

Korean missile threat spurs missile defense action," Asahi shimbun, 20-21 December
2003.
50. Handa, p. 74.
51. Leo Sartori, "Bush's Missile Defense System: Does it Pass Muster?" Washington,

Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, 3 December 2003.
52. Handa, p. 75.

53. Philip S. Golub, "US the world's deepest debtor," Le Monde Diplomatique, October

2003.
54. Asahi shimbun, 12 February 2004. Also Takashi Kitazume, "Diagnosing what reallyails Japan, Germany," The Japan Times, 12 March 2004.

55. US national debt as of beginning of 2004: $7.58 trillion, or ca Y804 trillion (Fukuda, p.

26). Japanese central and local government debt as of beginning 2004: 719 trillion yen($6.76 trillion at the same day's exchange rate). "Kokusai hakko, kako saidai ni," Asahi
shimbun, evening, 20 December 2003.
56. Asahi shimbun, 29 February 2004.
57. Hayano Toru, "Koizumi kassai no toki wa sugita," Ronza, August 2004, pp. 24-29 at

pp. 28-9.

58. See, for example, The Economist cover story for 14-20 February 2004: "At last, Japanis flying again."

59. The Long-Term Credit Bank, sold off to a foreign "vulture fund" in 2000, was thenreborn as Shinsei Bank. It swallowed 8 trillion yen (ca $70 billion) of public funds in theprocess, half of it irrecoverably, and its reincarnated form was beyond the reach ofJapanese tax authorities. ("Gaishi mokesaseta seifu," Asahi shimbun, 3 March 2004.) The

Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

57

Resona Bank was rescued by an infusion of two trillion yen in May and the Ashikagabanking group was nationalized at the end of November 2003.
60. Yanagida Kunio, "'Koizumi izen' to Koizumi igo'," Bungei Shunju, November 2003, pp.

94-107.

61. "Kokusai hakko, kako saidai ni," Asahi shimbun, (evening), 20 December 2003.
62. See my The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence, New York, ME Sharpe, 2nd revised

edition, 2001, and "The End of Japan's Construction State?" New Left Review, 13,January-February 2002, pp. 1-19.

63. Konya Fumiko, "Buchikowashita no wa Nihon keizai da," Sekai, November 2003, pp.

85-91.

64. This point is well made by Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based Arab

newspaper, al Quds, in an interview published in the Asahi shimbun, "Chuto seisaku, bei
wa tenkan seyo," 18 March 2004.
65. Recommendation 3 of the Rand report of June 2001 reads, "Support efforts in Japanto revise its constitution, to expand its horizon beyond territorial defense, and toacquire capabilities for supporting coalition operations." (Zalmay Khalizad et al, "TheUnited States and Asia: Toward a New U.S. Strategy and Force Posture," June 2001.The"Britain of the Far East" is from the "Armitage Report" of October 2000: Institute for
National Strategic Studies, "The United States and Japan: Advancing toward a MaturePartnership," Washington, National Defense University, 11 October 2000.
66. Zalmay Khalilzad et al, p. 15.
67. "Political pulse: Govt missing boat on U.S. bases," Daily Yomiuri Online, 18 September

2004.

68. On "Israelization" of US combat doctrine, and the instruction of US armed forces in

Gaza and West Bank techniques of urban suppression: Mike Davis, "The Pentagon as
global slumlord," Tom Dispatch, 19 April 2004.

69. Yoichi Nishimura, "Armitage expects 'generous' Japanese assistance to rebuild Iraq,"

Asahi shimbun, 26 September 2003.

70. "'US will assist SDF in Iraq,' Armitage pledge to Ishiba," Japan Times, 3 February 2004.
71. Funabashi Yoichi, "Beigun seihen -- Nihon no 'domeiryoku' takameru koki," Asahi

shimbun, 23 September 2004.

72. Asahi shimbun, 19 February 2003. Kyuma was appointed General Council Chairmanof the LDP in the September 2004 cabinet reshuffle.

McCormack: Koizumi’s Japan in Bush’s World58

73. The word used was "zokkoku." Interview, Asahi shimbun, 21 September 2004.
74. Hamish McDonald, "Howard's blank cheque for Washington may come with a hefty

surcharge," Sydney Morning Herald, 18 September 2001.

75. For a comprehensive list of the legislation: Richard Tanter "With eyes wide shut:

Japan, Heisei Militarization and the Bush Doctrine," Peter Van Ness and Mel Gurtov eds,
Confronting the Bush Doctrine: Critical Views From the Asia-Pacific, London, Routledge,
forthcoming December 2004.
76. "Kin soshoki wa atama no tenkai hayai hito," Asahi shimbun, 28 May 2004.
77. On his departure for Pyongyang, 22 May 2004, NHK TV.
78. "Nicho no kokko seijoka, shusho 'ichinen inai ni'," Asahi shimbun, 3 July 2004.
79. Cheney in December 2003, quoted in Jim Lobe, "Realism takes root in Washington,"

Asia Times, 26 June 2004.

80. Sakakibara Eisuke, "Japanese nationalism: Conservatives have derailed," Japan Times,

2 May 2004.

81. For recent discussion on the theme of reviving nationalism: Eugene Matthews,"Japan's New Nationalism," Foreign Affairs, November-December 2003, and Steven C.
Clemons, "Nationalism -- Old News or New Worry?" Daily Yomiuri, 9 December 2003.
For my recent assessment, Gavan McCormack, "New Tunes for an Old Song: Nationalism
and Identity in Post-Cold War Japan', in Roy Starrs, ed, Nations Under Siege:
Globalization and Nationalism in Asia, New York, Palgrave, 2002, pp. 137-167.
82. See Gavan McCormack, '"Introduction" to Second Revised edition, The Emptiness ofJapanese Affluence, New York, ME Sharpe, 2001. Also Ishida Hidenari, Ukai Satoshi,
Komori Yoichi, Takahashi Tetsuya, "21 seiki no manifesuto -- datsu 'parasaito
nashonarizumu'," Sekai, August 2000, pp. 189-208.
83. Wada Haruki, Tohoku Ajia kyodo no ie, Heibonsha, 2003, p. 166.

84. "Nichibei shuno no 'gensoku kakunin' dake," Asahi shimbun, 23 September 2004.
85. See, for example, the analyses by the military affairs specialist Maeda Tetsuo,"Kyusoku ni rinsen josei totonoeru jieitai," Sekai, April 2004, pp. 20-24, at p. 24, andKang Sangjung, in Kang Sangjung and Kato Shuichi, "Rekishi no bunkiten ni tatte,"
Ronza, April 2004, pp. 10-23, at p. 11.
86. Kang Sangjung, op. cit., p. 1

Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

59

By contrast, in “Japan in the American Imperium: Rethinking Security,” Peter J.
Katzenstein argues that Japan’s participation offered evidence of shifting, unresolved
policy alignments as Japanese struggle to find a post-Cold War stance. In particular,
Japanese security policy is caught between a U.S.-supportive nationalism and a more
distinctive Asianism, a tension that grows greater as China expands its internationalpresence.
Japan in the American Imperium: Rethinking Security
Peter J. Katzenstein
October 3, 2008
http://apjjf.org/-Peter-J.-Katzenstein/2921/article.html
A succession of weak Japanese Prime Ministers, the drama of the war in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and the current global financial crisis once again have returned the subject ofJapanese security policy to a position of relative political marginality. [*] Throughout theCold War, the analysis of Japanese security was a topic largely overlooked by both
American students of Japan and by students of national security. Japan, after all, was thecountry that had adopted a Peace Constitution with its famous Article 9 interpreted aslegally banning the use of armed force in the defense of national objectives. Its professional
military had little public standing and was under the thumb of civilians. And Japan’s grandstrategy aimed at gaining power and prestige and sought to leverage its economic prowess
to a position of regional and perhaps global leadership that would complement rather thanrival that of the United States. At the same time Japan relied on the continued protection by
the U.S. military. To be sure, since the late 1970s the U.S. government persistently pressed
Japan to play a larger regional role in Asia and to spend more of its rapidly growing GDP on
national defense. But Japan made no more than marginal concessions. On security issues it
kept a low regional profile, and since the late 1980s Japanese defense spending consistently
stayed below one percent of GDP. Writing on problems of Japanese national security, thus,
was left to policy specialists issuing regular conference reports on the ups and downs of the
U.S.–Japan bilateral defense relationship. Theoretically informed scholarship wasconspicuous by its absence.
Things have changed a great deal. The end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union,
and the 9/11 attacks have fundamentally transformed the international landscape. Having
failed in understanding the political dynamics that led to the end of the Cold War, somespecialists of national and international security turned their attention from the Western to
the Eastern perimeter of the Euro–Asian land mass. Would not the rapid rise of Japan,
South Korea and Taiwan, the Newly Industrializing Economies in Southeast Asia, China andVietnam, yield fertile grounds for the application of the timeless truths of realist theory? As
peace was breaking out in Europe, was Asia not destined to prepare for war (Friedberg
1993/94)?
Yet war and ethnic cleansing returned to Europe in the 1990s, while Asia remained
peaceful. Thought to be unstoppable in the 1980s, Japan's economic juggernaut founderedon more than a decade of economic stagnation from 1990, while China's economy

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continued to grow annually by about 8–10 percent, creating new security dynamics in East
Asia as well as between East Asia and the United States. The Asian financial crisis of 1997
illustrated how closely Asia's economic miracle had become linked to regional and global
markets. It also showed how, with the exception of Indonesia, Asian leaders skillfully
maneuvered out of that crisis in a very short time. The attack of September 11 and the U.S.
global war on terror increased regional concerns about the rise of al Qaeda (Chow 2005;
Leheny 2005). More importantly, it elevated the political importance of North Korea as amember of what President Bush called "the axis of evil," comprising countries that weresuspected of trading in the illicit international market for nuclear technology and thus
enhancing the risk that weapons of mass destruction could end up in the hands of groups
intent on large-scale violence, or otherwise engaging in criminal or terrorist activities.
JAPAN IN THE AMERICAN IMPERIUM
The broader context in which Japanese and Asian security affairs play themselves out
continues to be shaped heavily by the United States as the preeminent actor in theinternational system and in East Asia. For better and for worse, since the 1930s American
policies have had an enormous impact on East Asia. The creation of a liberal international
economic order after 1945 was an important precondition for the export-oriented
economic miracles of East Asian states. And the permanent stationing of about 100,000 U.S.
troops in Japan and South Korea guaranteed continued U. S. political involvement. The
Korean and Vietnam wars killed millions of Koreans and Vietnamese and left divisive
historical legacies, especially on the Korean peninsula. It would be a mistake, however, toequate the United States government solely with its economic, diplomatic or military
policies. The United States is both an actor in and a part of an American system of rule inworld politics that has evolved over the last half century. The concept of imperium refers toboth actor and system, to the conjoining of power that has both territorial and nonterritorial dimensions (Katzenstein 2005).
The American Imperium1
The United States government deploys its power in a system of rule that merges themilitary, economic, political and cultural elements which constitute the foundations for thepreeminence of the American imperium in world politics. Territorial power was thecoinage of the old land and maritime empires that collapsed at the end of the three greatwars of the 20th century: World War I, World War II and the Cold War. American bases
circling the Soviet Union during the Cold War and springing up again after the 9/11 attacks
underline the continued importance of the territorial dimensions of the American empire.
The U.S. has a quarter of a million military personnel deployed on scores of large militarybases and hundreds of small ones scattered around the globe. The non-territorial
dimensions of American power are reflected in the American Empire, a constellation offlexible hierarchies, fluid identities, and multiple exchanges. It is defined by technologies
which are shrinking time and space, the alluring power that inheres in the American
pattern of mass consumption, and the attraction of the American dream in a land that,
evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, is viewed by many millions around the world
mainly as the promised land of freedom and unlimited possibilities.

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US military bases worldwide, 2007. Wikimedia
Territorial empire and non-territorial Empire are ideal types. They merge in the politicalexperience and practices of the American imperium and the formal and informal politicalsystems of rule as well as the combination of hierarchical and egalitarian political relations
that it embodies. This imperium is both constraining and enabling. The relative importanceof its territorial and non-territorial dimensions waxes and wanes over time, shaped by thedomestic struggles in American politics that reflect the rise and fall of political coalitions
with competing political constituencies, interests and visions. Japanese and Asian security
affairs are encompassed by an imperium which embodies both the material, territorial andactor-centric dimensions of U.S. power on the one hand and the symbolic, non-territorialand systemic dimensions of American power on the other.
Regional core states such as Japan and Germany play crucial roles in linking world regions
such as Asia and Europe to the American imperium. Specialists focusing on the politics ofregional powers other than Japan and Germany—such as China, Korea, Britain or France—
may rightly object to the singling out of Germany and Japan as special core states. Yet, corestates play different roles, as supporter states in the case of Japan and Germany, and asregional pivots in the case of, for example, China and France (Chase, Hill and Kennedy1999). The distinction between pivot and supporter is a historically specific rather than astructurally general argument. It identifies Japan and Germany as core states not because of
their size and power but because of their specific historical experience and evolution in the
Anglo-American imperium. And because the imperium is Anglo-American, for both
structural and historical reasons Britain -- with its “special relationship” to the UnitedStates and for many decades wracked by fundamental disagreements about its European
role -- cannot play the role of supporter state.
A historical comparison of Japan with Germany has advantages over the narrower
conceptualization that Richard Samuels (2007) has offered in his recent book. Samuel’s
account is a triumph of “old” security studies over “new” security issues such as humanKatzenstein: Japan in the American Imperium

62

security, environmental degradation, terrorism or the spread of weapons of mass
destruction. It is striking how the discursive moves of the main-stream and antimainstream in Japan’s multiple strategic traditions so carefully tracked in his book areremarkably narrow in what they have to say about the full range of Japan’s contemporary
security challenges. Equally significant, Samuels rigorously sidesteps all opportunities toplace Japan in a comparative perspective. The attentive reader thus is left with an analysis
that makes Japan look unique rather than distinctive. Japan’s self-defined sense ofvulnerability is a subject that looms large for Samuels. Yet this condition is hardly unique toJapan. Stubbs (1999, 2005), Zhu (2000, 2002), and Larsson (2007) have applied the same
concept to explain a variety of political outcomes in Asia, and I have tried to do the same forthe small European states (Katzenstein 1985). Is there some distinctive quality to theexperience of vulnerability that sets Japan apart from other states? Furthermore, incontrast to Germany with its important role in NATO and the EU, Japan, the other main Axis
power that suffered total defeat in its challenge of Anglo-American hegemony in the middleof the 20th century, has resisted firmly the internationalization of its state identity andsecurity practices (Buruma 1994; Nabers 2006). Is there a relation between the experienceof vulnerability and the resistance of internationalization? And if there is, what is its
nature? Answers to such questions are important. Neglecting comparisons makes
Samuels's core claim—that Japan is currently in the process of articulating a new grandstrategy involving various forms of hedging—empirically indistinguishable from that of its
main rival: that Japan is currently in the process of refurbishing its existing grand strategy.
One of the great virtues of the book, however, is the fact that repeatedly the author
graciously concedes this central point (Samuels 2007: 64, 107–08, 209. See also Pyle 2007;
Midford 2006; Mochizuki 2004).
Because only Japan and Germany challenged in war the Anglo-American world order in thefirst half of the 20th century, and experienced traumatic defeat and occupation, no otherworld region has evolved similarly situated core states. After its historic victory over thepolitical alternative that Fascism posed to Anglo-American hegemony in the middle of the20th century, U.S. foreign policies sought to anchor its Japanese and German clients firmly
within America's emerging imperium ( Lake 1988).
Gavan McCormack (2007, 79–80) writes: "...it is hard to escape the feeling that they [U.S.
officials today] functioned rather as proconsuls, advising and instructing, while seeing
Japan still as an imperial dependency, rather like General MacArthur a half-century earlier,
who was acclaimed a benevolent liberator even while treating the Japanese people as
children." An assessment that was correct for the late 1940s is wrong half a century later.
In the case of Japan as much as Germany it is a mistake to argue that this client status
remains intact. Eventually both states left their client status behind, becoming regional
powers in their own right and supporters of the United States. Each is intent on exercising
economic and political power indirectly, thereby simultaneously extending the reach anddurability of the American imperium (Katzenstein and Shiraishi 1997, 2006; Katzenstein1997). These two supporter states were of vital importance in keeping Asia and Europe
porous rather than closed regions. Their attachment to the American imperium was steady,first in the name of anti-Communism, and subsequently in the name of globalization andcounter-terrorism. Yet the difference in the geo-strategic context—as yet no politicallyJapan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

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viable East Asian Community, no large immigrant Muslim population in Japan, ageographically proximate perceived national security threat in the form of North Korea,
and a deep suspicion of an increasingly powerful China—has left Japan a more dependable
supporter state of the United States than Germany. The bipartisan Armitage-Nye report ofOctober 2000 illustrates how far American policy has come to recognize Japan's strategic
importance for U.S. foreign policy in East Asia, and how far it has left behind policies thatregarded Japan as a client (as in the 1950s) or the subject of external pressure politics (asin the 1980s) (Green 2007: 147).
This is not to deny that as history changes, so may the character and standing of these two
supporter states. Japan and Germany are increasingly removed in time, although notnecessarily in terms of their memory, from their traumatic national defeats. After 9/11 theBush administration's sharp turn toward a militant and unilateralist policy has given rise tostrong opposition among mass publics abroad (Katzenstein and Keohane 2007). For
example, democratization in South Korean politics gave rise to an anti-Americanism thathas been accentuated greatly by the abrasive political style of a hapless U.S. diplomacy(Steinberg 2005). Anti-Americanism among the young in particular has risen to heightsthat would have been inconceivable in the late 1990s. In China, American-inflected
globalization is embraced while anti-hegemonism, especially its behavioral manifestations,continues to be a powerful oppositional ideology that resists American primacy. While it is
not as virulent or racist as anti-Japanese sentiments, this anti-Americanism is a powerfullatent force that is readily activated around many issues and most certainly around thevolatile issue of Taiwan (Johnston and Stockmann 2007).
Japan is a notable exception to these changes in East Asian popular attitudes. In the midand late 1950s Japanese anti-Americanism ran so deep, in the form of opposition to the USJapan Security Treaty, that President Eisenhower cancelled his visit in 1960, after theJapanese government informed the White House that a full mobilization of Japan's total
police force could not guarantee the physical security of the Presidential motorcade fromHaneda airport to the Imperial Hotel in downtown Tokyo. Since the end of the Vietnam war
anti-Americanism has virtually disappeared as Japan's party system has moved to centerright, and as a new national consciousness has taken hold of a younger generation
psychologically no longer moved by the dominant concerns of the 1950s and 1960s andunnerved by North Korean nuclear-reinforced bluster and China's rise. At a popular level
the relationship between Japan and the United States is free from rancor. Despite sustained
protests against American bases in Okinawa, public opinion polls typically show above 60
per cent of the Japanese public favoring the United States, about twice as large ascorresponding numbers for various European countries (Pew Global Attitudes Project
2007; Tanaka 2007).
Furthermore, as the character of the American imperium changes, its two supporter states
are unavoidably repositioned in the matrix of Asian and European politics. There exists
thus no reason why the role of these supporter states could not be filled by others. If
Germany were to be submerged totally in a European polity (which seems very unlikely)
and if Japan's GDP were surpassed, eventually, by China's (which seems very likely, but not
imminent), together with other historical changes affecting Asia, Europe, and the UnitedKatzenstein: Japan in the American Imperium

64States, this might eventually transform the role played by traditional supporters and otherregional pivots. In the case of France and China, for example, the magnitude of suchchanges would have to be very substantial. These two states are crucial pivots. But it ishard to imagine how they could replace Japan and Germany any time soon as Asia's andEurope's supporter states.
Japan
Alliance with the United States has provided the political and strategic foundations forJapan’s economic rise in the American imperium (Ikenberry and Inoguchi 2003, 2007). To
be sure, with the passing of time Asia has become more important as war and occupation
receded and as Japan's reconstruction and economic clout made it Asia's preeminent
economic power. But it was Asia viewed from Tokyo through an American looking-glass.
There was more than a whiff of the historical role that Japan sought after the Meiji
restoration—casting itself in the role of interlocutor between Asia and the West.
Since 1945 Japan has experienced a phenomenal rise. Its economic fortunes were helped
greatly by serving as the Asian armory in America's global struggle against Communism,
first in Korea in the 1950s and subsequently in Vietnam and Southeast Asia in the 1960s.
The collapse of the Bretton Woods system and the two oil shocks of the 1970s set the stage
for the economic rise of Japan in financial markets. The 1980s were the decade of Japan's
global ascendance as an economic superpower, ending in a speculative bubble thatcollapsed into economic torpor lasting more than a decade. In manufacturing Japan's
technological prowess is no longer unchallenged in defining East Asia's economic frontiers.
Japan has a mature economy that is trying to cope with an aging and thrifty population andwith being one of the two main sources of credit for the United States. This completed thetransformation of Japan's strategic relationship with the United States from client tosupporter state.
Japan has been important in supporting, both directly and indirectly, U.S. policies in avariety of ways (Krauss and Pempel 2004; McCormack 2007; Pyle 2007; Hughes andKrauss 2007). It helped refurbish the institutional infrastructure of international financial
institutions following the Asian financial crisis of 1997, became for a while the world's
largest aid donor, and played a central role, especially in the mid-1980s, of intervening in
financial markets to realign the values of the world's major currencies. Since the 1980s
Japan has accommodated the United States on issues central to the functioning of theinternational economy, with evident reluctance in opening Japanese markets for goods,
services and capital and with an air of resignation in amassing close to a trillion dollars inreserves, substantial portions of which have helped to finance perennial U.S. budget andtrade deficits.

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Japanese aid allocations 2005-06
With governments deeply involved in shaping their nations' economic trajectories Japan
expected to lead Asia both directly through aid, trade and advice and indirectly byproviding an attractive economic model. Japan could not develop and grow unless Asia also
developed and grew. By focusing on the politics of productivity, Japan hoped to sidestep
political quarrels and dispel historical animosities. It thus sought to create the politicalconditions where its highly competitive industries could prosper through energetic export
drives and smart foreign investments. Regional development and Japanese ascendance
would thus be indelibly linked in a win-win situation which cloaked in liberal garments
asymmetries in economic position and political power.
This strategy proved politically unworkable. In the 1960s different Japanese proposals formore formal regional integration schemes foundered on the deep suspicions that other
Asian states, many of them former colonies or the targets of Japanese invasion, harboredagainst Japan. Having been rebuffed, the Japanese government settled after the early 1970s
on more informal and market-based approaches to Asian integration. After the dramatic
appreciation of the Yen in 1985 Japanese firms were quick to develop far-flung networks ofsubcontractors and affiliated firms. Foreign supplier chains of Japanese firms provided aKatzenstein: Japan in the American Imperium66

new regional infrastructure for industries such as textiles, automobiles, and electronics.
Thus Japanese investment had a deep impact on specific economic sectors, whole countries,
and the entire Asia-Pacific region. And the regionalization of Japan's economic power had
the political benefit of diffusing much of the political conflict with the United States overbilateral trade imbalances. For Japanese enmeshment has helped create a more integrated
regional economy in East Asia that is now fueled also by Korean, Taiwanese, Southeast
Asian, and Chinese firms. The structural preconditions for this process of regionalization
was the insatiable appetite of American consumers for inexpensive Asian products and theopenness of American markets to imports from Asia. This outcome was fully compatible
with the grand strategy of the United States which in the early 1970s normalized its
relations with China to balance the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and which has
consistently favored a far-reaching liberalization of markets. There would have been fewer
and smaller Asian miracles and less Asian regionalism without the parking lots of American
shopping malls filled in America's irresistible emporium of consumption (DeGrazia
2005). And while it is premature to reach an informed assessment of the politicalconsequence of the financial crisis that spread from Wall Street to Europe and throughout
the global financial system, it seems reasonable to expect economic retrenchment on Main
Street to affect the business prospects of Asian exporters who will look, as they have inrecent decades, for growth in Asian markets while American consumers are squeezed andinterests rise in the United States.
The role of supporter state was also evident in Japan's national security policies. Although
it was constrained for decades by a pacifist public culture and, somewhat less, by Article 9of its Peace Constitution, the Japanese government has consistently adhered to policies that
supported the United States, especially in the 1980s and with increased intensity since
9/11. To be sure there have been moments—such as in the mid-1970s and the mid1990s—when the American staying power in Asia appeared sufficiently uncertain so as tosuggest the need for possibly far-reaching changes in Japan's security strategy. But these
moments of uncertainty passed quickly, and Japan remained a close ally of the UnitedStates—then and now.
The reasons for Japan's steadfast support have varied. The military, economic and politicaladvantages of the American security umbrella were at the heart of the Yoshida doctrine
and widely recognized in all political quarters. Expending less than 1 percent of Japan's
GDP for national defense was feasible because American taxpayers spent a lot more. And asJapan's standing in the Asia-Pacific increased so did the pressure of the U.S. government tohave the Japanese government play a more expansive, and expensive, role in regional
security affairs—as a reliable junior partner of the United States. Some of Japan's critics,
both at home and abroad, detected in the 1980s a new tone of assertiveness and a newnationalism in Prime Minister Nakasone's Japan. Two decades later, under Prime Ministers
Koizumi and Abe the increase in an assertive Japanese nationalism was more prominently
there for everybody to see. This was the political context in which the Japanese government,
in February 2005, decided to raise its profile on one of the region's most vexing problems,by issuing a joint security declaration with the United States that identified the peacefulresolution of the Taiwan issue as a shared strategic objective.

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Prime Minister Koizumi's strategy was to attach Japan even more closely to the UnitedStates than in the past (Samuels 2007: 86–108; Hughes and Krauss 2007: 160–63), while
toying with the idea of bringing about an opening toward North Korea. After the 9/11
attacks the Diet passed in record time legislation permitting the dispatch of the Japanesenavy to the Indian Ocean to provide logistical support for the U.S.-led coalition forces in
Afghanistan. After the U.S. invasion of Iraq the Diet enacted legislation permitting the
deployment of the Japanese army to Iraq to aid in reconstruction and the stationing of theJapanese navy and air force in the Persian Gulf to provide logistical support of theAmerican war. In 2003 the Japanese government agreed to acquire a ballistic missile
defense system which should be fully operational by 2011. And legislation introduced in2005 gives the Prime Minister and military commanders the power to mobilize militaryforce in response to missile attacks, without Cabinet deliberation in the course of analyzing
particular empirical contexts or Parliamentary oversight. Since Japan is buying the main
components of both weapons systems, the Patriot Advance Capability (PAC)-3 and the
Aegis destroyers, from the United States, missile defense will further consolidate the U.S.–
Japan alliance and tighten technological cooperation between the two militaries. In 2006
the U.S. and Japan completed a Defense Policy Review Initiative which strengthened thebilateral alliance to meet regional and global security threats. Toward that end andoverriding significant local objections, Prime Minister Koizumi agreed to a substantial andcostly realignment of U.S. bases in Japan. The practical implication of this agreement was tomake Japan a frontline command post in the projection of U.S. military power, not only in
East Asia but extending as far as to the Middle East. Like previous ones (Katzenstein 1996:
131–52) this was a further reinterpretation of the geographical scope of the U.S.–Japansecurity treaty and the mission of U.S. bases that went well beyond protecting the Japanese
homeland and securing regional stability in East Asia. In fact, the Japanese and U.S.
governments issued a joint statement stressing their shared global objectives of theeradication of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. These
important changes in the U.S.–Japan alliance are clearly linked to changes in the characterof Japan and the East Asian context. Yet it is easy to overlook the fact that, with thedisintegration of the Japanese Left, strong opposition to Japan's playing a larger militaryrole has changed as it has moved to other political parties; that opposition has notdisappeared.
After 9/11 under Koizumi’s leadership Japan embraced what looked like a grand strategy
of unquestioned security alignment with the United States. Japan appeared to be deeply
invested in enhancing its special relationship with the United States, imitating that otherisland nation, Great Britain. But under Abe and Fukuda, leaders of astonishingly little
staying power in office, within the context of the US-Japan security alliance,
policy vacillated again between nationalism and Asianism. It remains to be seen how
Japan's strategy will fare under Prime Minister Aso as the United States moves beyond thePresidency of George W. Bush (C. Hughes 2007).
JAPAN AND CHINA: TWO TIGERS ON ONE MOUNTAIN?
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, China's entrance into global markets and its gradualKatzenstein: Japan in the American Imperium

68

socialization into the role of a responsible regional power has been the single mostimportant development affecting Japan and East Asia. This is not to argue that China has
already replaced Japan as the preeminent economic power in Asia. Far from it. In 2002
Japan accounted for 13.5 percent of global GDP almost four times China's figure. In terms ofmarket exchanges, a better measure of regional and global power dynamics thanpurchasing power parity measures of GDP, Japan was leading China by a ratio of 4:1 andabout 40:1 on a per capita basis.2 After a decade of economic stagnation Japan's share of
the combined regional GDP of Northeast and Southeast Asia had slipped from 72 to 65
percent. And during the same period of explosive economic growth, China's GDP as aproportion of Japan's had increased from 13 to 23 percent (Katzenstein 2006: 2). 3 Andeven though the situation is changing from year to year, it is good to remember that until
2005 China was still lagging behind Germany as the world's leading exporter. Current
Chinese plans call for increasing the country's GDP to $4.4 trillion by 2020, quadrupling thefigure for the year 2000. If successful, China is likely to top Japan by that time in terms ofmarket size measured at current exchange rates. Although these facts deflate a bit thebreathless adulation with which some journalists and politicians are greeting the Chinese
juggernaut, just as they greeted Japan's in the 1980s, it is beyond doubt that verysignificant changes in China are having a profound effect on Asian and Japanese security.
China's Rise
The political rise of China as a responsible regional power is an important politicaldevelopment (Kang 2007; Johnston 2004; Economy and Oksenberg 1999; Johnston andRoss 1999; Selden 1997). In the 1970s and 1980s China exchanged the role of arevolutionary for that of a realist power. China's raison d'etat had a hard-edge of realpolitik
that reminded some observers of Imperial Germany in the decades leading up to WorldWar I. After more than a century of humiliation and isolation, was not China finally entitledto its rightful place under the sun? The international politics of sports, energy, xenophobic
nationalism, economic mercantilism all seemed to point in that direction. Indeed, somerealist theorists who had been baffled by the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of
the Soviet Union in Europe, saw in Asia a region "ripe for rivalry" (Friedberg 1993/94).
China's diplomacy, however, is not only hard-core realist. On many issues China has
adopted a multilateral and accommodating stance. It has recognized the long-term
advantages that accrue from its growing economic power and that dictate a diplomatic
strategy supporting what has come to be known as China's "peaceful rise." This change isvisible in comparison to both the United States and Japan. A shift in its national security
doctrine in September 2002 established the United States as a revisionist power in the
Middle East, in contrast to China playing the role of a status quo power in the international
system. In its war against terror the U.S. government sought far-reaching changes. Most
importantly it has claimed the right to preemptive attack, even under circumstances when
there would be time and opportunity to seek approval from the United Nations. In sharp
contrast China joined many other states in insisting on the importance of the legitimacythat international approval confers, as the U.S. had in the era of multilateralism that it had
ushered in at the end of World War II. Anti-hegemonism became once again the watchword
in Beijing as it balanced carefully a strong interest in China's territorial sovereignty with

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growing demands of multilateral diplomacy, including on hot-button issues such as North
Korea's nuclear weapons program. In East Asia, in particular, instead of running the risks ofEuro-centric balance-of-power politics China is seeking to return to a Sino-centric bandwagoning politics, thus creating political space for the cautious hedging strategies of anumber of East Asian states. And Chinese diplomacy has shifted to include multilateralregional arrangements as an explicit tool to supplement its bilateral approach to regionaland global issues.
In contrast to Japan with its more inward economic orientation, the distinctiveness ofChina's ascendance lies in an economic might and political clout that is structurally
predisposed to reinforce rather than challenge East Asia's openness in a world of regions.
Central to that structural predisposition is the realignment, rather than (re)unification, of avibrant Chinese diaspora in Taiwan and Southeast Asia, with the Chinese state (Gomez andHsiao 2004, 2001; Callahan 2003; Naughton 1997; Weidenbaum and Hughes 1996;Dædalus 1991).4 Millions of overseas Chinese had left the Southern coast of China in the
19th century for destinations throughout Southeast Asia. Over time they became theeconomic elites in various countries. As successive waves of Asian states experienced theireconomic miracles, often with the help of developmental states, throughout East Asia
networks of overseas Chinese were ready as important intermediaries connecting national
political elites with foreign firms. While the core of Chinese business has remained familycontrolled, surrounding layers of equity-holding and political control were gradually takenover by members of the indigenous political elites. In the 1990s, in terms of its sheer
economic size the overseas Chinese economy in Southeast Asia reportedly ranked fourth in
the world.
The category of "overseas Chinese" is ambiguous. In the 19th century the Chinese diaspora
lacked a homogenous identity as it was divided, among others, by dialect, hometown, blood
relationships and guild associations. As mainland China was engulfed in civil war,
revolutionary upheaval and Maoist rule, a thin veneer of common expatriate experience
grew, but not enough to conceal the enormous variability in the political experience andstanding of the overseas Chinese in different parts of Southeast Asia. The cultural trait thathelps define the overseas Chinese thus is an almost infinite flexibility in their approach tobusiness.
The overseas Chinese presented the Chinese state with a formidable problem after theCommunist Party seized power in 1949. The 1953 census listed the overseas Chinese aspart of China's population. And the 1954 Constitution of the Peoples Republic of China
provided for representation of all overseas Chinese in the National People's Congress(Suryadinata 1978: 9–10, 26, 29). However, conflict with Indonesia and other Southeast
Asian states forced a change in policy. All of these states were wary of the politicalallegiance of their ethnic Chinese populations. After 1957 Chinese foreign policy
encouraged the overseas Chinese to seek local citizenship and local education. And since1975 China's constitutions have stripped overseas Chinese of membership in the National
People's Congress. During the last generation an overwhelming number of overseas
Chinese have accepted citizenship in their new homelands. The term overseas Chinese now
denotes ethnic Chinese of Southeast Asian birth and nationality.

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In China both provincial and central governments have sought to strengthen therelationship between China's surging economy and the overseas Chinese, and especially
Taiwan, through an active encouragement of foreign investment, remittances and tourism.
What Barry Naughton (1997) calls the "China Circle" connects Hong Kong, Taiwan, and theoverseas Chinese throughout Southeast Asia. Upward of one million Taiwanesebusinessmen now live in China, undercutting ineffective attempts of the Taiwanese
government to resist the strong pull of China's surging economy. And it is easy to forgetthat outside of this China circle the overseas Chinese constitute also a North American andindeed a global diaspora.
Since the late 1970s China has attracted half a trillion dollars in foreign investment, about
ten times the total foreign investment that has flown into Japan since 1945. Between 1985
and 1995 about two-thirds of realized foreign investment in China is estimated to havecome from domestic Chinese sources which used Hong Kong to circumvent domestic taxes,
one-third from foreign investors. Since 1995 this proportion is widely believed to havereversed itself. Of the 250 billion dollars of total foreign investments, perhaps as much as
half has come from Taiwan, and additional undetected funds have flown in from Southeast
Asia.5 Whatever the precise figures, in the coming years even closer tie-ups between
overseas and mainland Chinese business are the next phase in the global spread of Asianbusiness networks. It is these market- and state-driven tie-ups, not formal politicalinstitutions, which are the defining characteristic of the rise of China and the role of Asia inworld politics. The evolution of Chinese capitalism thus is not only a domestic but also a
regional and global phenomenon. Across a broad range of issues, uniquely in Asia, China islinked inextricably to the Asia-Pacific. And as a rapidly emerging creditor of the UnitedStates and a looming military rival at least in the eyes of important segments of theAmerican defense establishment, China is also linked intimately to the American imperium.
Japan and China
Japan must come to terms with a China that is both a vital economic partner and also a
political rival in East Asia (Lam 2006; Dreyer 2006; Cohen, 2005; Abramowitz, Funabashi
and Wang 2002; Friedman 2000; Wang 2000; Zhao 1997; Taylor 1996; Iriye 1992). Japan
adheres to an increasingly international economic and a fully internationalized security
strategy. In sharp contrast, China follows a fully international economic and a moreconventional national security strategy. Both reinforce the porosity of East Asia. In thelatter stages of the Koizumi administration the deterioration in Sino-Japanese relations was
striking. Between May 2004 and October 2005, for example, the relations between these
two regional powers were affected negatively by a series of high-profile political events, on
average once a month (Pei and Swaine 2005: 5). By the end of Koizumi's Prime
Ministership, Japan's relations with China had reached rock-bottom. In 2005 just under 10
percent of the Japanese and Chinese public held favorable views of the other country (Sato2007: 3; Tanaka 2007). Perceptions of imagined slights and hurt pride have played out on
both sides against very different interpretations of the past. They are illustrated by thestrong opposition of the Chinese public to any historical revision in the interpretation ofJapan's role as the aggressor in the East Asian war in Japanese textbooks. Japanese fear andJapan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

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envy feed anti-Chinese sentiments as Chinese rates of growth since the early 1990s haveoutstripped Japanese rates by margins of 13:1 in per capita gross domestic product andownership of personal computers, 12:1 in patent applications, 11:1 in total trade, and 9:1 inresearch and development expenditures (Pei and Swaine 2005: 6). Domestic politics create
political incentives in both countries to magnify and exploit popular sentiments, driven byfactional infighting in China and electoral strategizing in Japan. China and Japan thus risk
being trapped in a political relationship of deepening suspicion and enmity that runs
counter to their growing economic interdependence and the prospect of joint gains.
Prime Minister Abe's visit to Beijing in October 2006, right after he took over from Koizumi,
and the return visit of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in April 2007 have helped improve thepolitical climate between the two countries. Both governments saw the change in Japaneseleadership as a chance for bringing about an improvement in bilateral relations.
Furthermore, there exist concrete plans for resumption of more frequent meetings
between the political leadership of the two countries (Pilling 2006; Dickie and Pilling 2007).
But many contentious issues persist under the surface. Most importantly, Prime Minister
Abe remained deliberately ambiguous in his talks with the Chinese government andJapanese journalists about a possible visit of the Yakusuni shrine, avoiding the need to tellthe Chinese that he would not and domestic supporters that he might be making such avisit. His resignation made the issue mute as his successor, Prime Minister Fukuda, wascommitted to better relations with Japan’s East Asian neighbors, illustrated by theagreement with China over the Diaoyutai/Senkaku islands in June 2008. It remains to be
seen how Prime Minister Aso will handle this issue. Domestic political weakness may force
him to abandon a diplomatically sensible ambiguity on Yasukuni Shrine in favor of shoringup his nationalist base in Japan with a gesture that the Chinese leadership may be unable orunwilling to ignore. Such a political move would not come as a total surprise. As Foreign
Minister Aso, more than Prime Minister Abe, favored a "value-based" foreign policy thatcreates an "arc of freedom and prosperity across the democracies in Pacific Asia" designed
to exclude China. For its part China remains very suspicious of Japan's reinvigorated
security alliance with the United States, the refashioning of Japan's national security
apparatus, and plans to revise the constitution (Pei 2007). Chinese exploitation of natural
gas reserves in the middle of disputed waters in the East China Sea, and Japan's hope for
Chinese backing for its permanent seat on the UN Security Council provide additional
roadblocks for improvement in political relations between two governments.
The domestic, regional and global contours of politics suggest that the evolution of SinoJapanese relations will be shaped by a mixture of engagement and deterrence in theirbilateral relations, by their competitive and complementary region-building practices in an
East Asia that will resist domination by either country (Katzenstein 2006), and by thecultivation of their different strategic and economic links to the American imperium. Japan
has had a deep strategic partnership with the United States for more than half a century.
For China, those links are rooted in a developmental trajectory that prizes economic
openness and that increasingly seeks global engagement on all fronts. Through Japan and
China a porous Asia is tethered in both its security and economic relations to the American
imperium. The U.S. presence in East Asia can help stabilize Sino-Japanese relations at leastin the near- and medium-term while political efforts at East Asian region-building proceed.

Katzenstein: Japan in the American Imperium

72

Despite the political turbulence and rapid changes in Sino-Japanese relations, for someyears to come the American imperium and East Asia may remain politically compatible.
And because their political strategies are so different, the two tigers may learn how to liveon the same mountain.
Peter J. Katzenstein is the Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. Professor of International Studies at Cornell
University and the President of the American Political Science Association. His research andteaching lie at the intersection of the fields of international relations and comparative
politics.
This is a revised and updated excerpt from chapter 1 of Peter J. Katzenstein, Rethinking
Japanese Security: Internal and External Dimensions (New York: Routledge, 2008), withpermission of the publisher. Posted at Japan Focus on October 14, 2008.
Notes[*]I would like to thank Mark Selden for much more than his careful editing of themanuscript and his superb critical comments and suggestions. The errors of omission andcommission that remain are simply the result of my inability or unwillingness to follow his
good advice.
[1] This section summarizes some of the major arguments in Katzenstein 2005.
[2] In terms of purchasing power parity, according to some estimates China's economy
surpassed Japan's as early as 1994 (Shiraishi 2006: 10).
[3] According to the IMF, by 2006 Japan's GDP was $4.367 trillion compared to China's
figure of $2.630 trillion, a ratio of 1.66:1. (accessed 4 August 2007)[4] The material in the next four paragraphs draws on Katzenstein 2005, 63–67.
[5] Interviews, Tianjin and Beijing, March–April 2006.
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The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) publication included in this reader, “Japan’s
Assistance to Afghanistan: Towards Self-Reliance,” explains that, regardless of theissues raised by McCormack and Katzenstein, Japan’s humanitarian efforts in Afghanistan
are substantial. Many of these projects involve collaboration with NATO, grassroots
organizations and various international organizations, especially those in the United
Nations orbit, and represent an attempt to separate Japan somewhat from American
military actions there. One of the many parallel events included in the 2012
commemoration of 3/11 was a UNICEF-sponsored videoconference between high school
students in Fukushima and the Tajwar Saltana Girls High School in Afghanistan, one of theschools rehabilitated by funds from UNICEF and the government of Japan.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs“Japan’s Assistance to Aghanistan”
http://www.mofa.go.jp/files/000019264.pdf

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State, Society and Humanitarian War
Military interventions since the end of the cold war have often been justified as
humanitarian. But, as both experts in international relations and others have noted, thatjustification requires deciding whether we should give priority to state sovereignty or therights of individuals. In the best-case scenario, nations intervene in other sovereign nations
to prevent despotic leaders from violating human rights; however, the nice-sounding idealof “humanitarianism” can easily become a pretext for interventions that have little moral
justification.
“Humanitarian” reasons had special relevance in the post-9/11 “war on terror”
since coalition partners in Afghanistan believed they were fighting Al Qaeda to protect
Americans and others from additional terrorist attacks and to prevent the Taliban fromabusing Afghanis. In Iraq, the United States and United Kingdom did not act in self-defense
but conducted a preemptive strike in the mistaken belief it would prevent Iraq from
causing harm to others through weapons of mass destruction. Are humanitarian
interventions ever justified? What about when the premise is mistaken? In internationallaw, instructs Richard Falk, the United Nations was designed to act as the negotiating bodythat exerts a “bright yellow light of caution”. He argues that the UN should be empowered
to check whether an intervention is based on a false pretext of humanitarianism, orconversely, when the doctrine of non-intervention allows the world community to ignore atrue humanitarian crisis such as genocide.17
For Japan in the past these norms governing the ideal of “humanitarian
intervention” were especially important because they suggest conditions under which
Japan can constitutionally play a role in international military interventions. Moreover,given Japan’s commitment to uphold the ideals of the United Nations as part of its own
campaign to secure a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, it was significant that thenation followed America’s lead in rejecting the United Nations in order to invade Iraq.
Two selections from The Asia-Pacific Journal call attention to Japanese concerns
about “humanitarianism.” Shirakawa Toru, in "Invasion in the Name of Humanitarian
Aid: The U.S. in Afghanistan" observed and interviewed American soldiers in Afghanistan
and discovered that humanitarian aid and violence are hard to separate and that thesoldiers have many motivations for joining the military, and are often driven more byambitions for overcoming class obstacles rather than patriotic spirit or humanitarianism.
He is troubled by the fact that humanitarianism is not more actively promoted on the
ground in Afghanistan.

17 Richard Falk, The Costs of War: International Law, the UN, and World Order after Iraq (New York: Routledge,2008), p. 152.

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Invasion in the Name of Humanitarian Aid: The US in Afghanistan
Shirakawa Toru, Translation by Zeljko Cipris
May 17, 2009http://apjjf.org/-Shirakawa-Toru/3144/article.html
It has been seven years since the US military launched air strikes in revenge for the 9/11
terror attacks. The Taliban have not been suppressed and Afghanistan remains in a state ofwar. Although overshadowed by the war against Iraq, this too is a war of aggression. A
Japanese photo journalist examines the US-Afghan War.
The azure skies peculiar to Afghanistan weigh heavily on the land. Rivers that are supposed
to flow among the mountains have dried up, exposing the earth’s cracked skin. Snowremains here and there, but it is still too early in the season for it to moisten the soil.
Magnificent mountains extend in all directions.
Infantry Company “Alpha”
I reached the Spira district among these mountains on a “Chinook,” US army’s giant
transport helicopter.

Afghanistan’s mountains
I covered the front as a US armed forces war correspondent, accompanying the army’s 1503 Rifle Infantry Company “Alpha” which is deployed in Spira, in Afghanistan’s eastern
Khost province.

Shirakawa: Invasion In the Name of Humanitarian Aid80

Map of Afghanistan
Spira is adjacent to the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The border region,
known as a tribal area, is not governed by the laws of either country. Since the 2001 US
invasion, the ousted Taliban have been attacking foreign troops and the Afghan army, whilebasing themselves in this tribal area. “Alpha’s” mission is to carry out humanitarian aid, as
well as to interdict and suppress the Taliban who come across the border. Their statedobjective is the provision of medical aid to the population who live in the vicinity of thefront-line base. Along with a combat unit numbering about a hundred, there is ahumanitarian aid unit of six. Among the latter there are women physicians and evenveterinarians. I left the base with the humanitarian aid unit who said they were going tovisit nearby houses. A protection unit accompanied us. Though they call themselvesdoctors and vets, they look no different than combatants. They wear bulletproof vests andsunglasses. M16 rifles hang from their necks. Physicians who are supposed to be saving
lives are carrying rifles. It is a strange spectacle. “There’s a woman. Don’t come in.” As they
approach a house, a man of about forty, presumably its owner, is standing in the doorway.
The eyes with which he looks at the US troops are extremely frightened. “Please don’t comeinto the house. There’s a woman inside. Please stop.” The man firmly refuses the US army’s
medical assistance.
The commanding officer persuades the man to yield, promising that only female soldiersJapan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

81

will enter.
The female soldiers enter the house. The protection unit soldiers follow directly after them.
This is not what was promised. As I enter the premises, I see protection unit soldiers on theroof.
I tense up. Nearly all the people who live in the border region support the Taliban. The
Taliban often use private houses as a base. If any Taliban are discovered, there might be afirefight.
Fortunately, the protection unit emerges from the house having found no one who looks
like a combatant. Medical treatment has been given, but it is a formality. The man, whoseskin is dry, has been given cream. “Sometimes we even bring an Afghan doctor from a
hospital. The medicine’s free too. We show them that we can do what even the Taliban
can’t.” The aid unit’s commanding officer looks triumphant. As we leave the house, we seethat soldiers from the protection unit have lined up the males of the house against a wall. A
soldier is holding what looks like a camera against a man’s face. The man’s eye is reflectedin the apparatus lens.
“I’m taking a photo of his retina and data-basing it.”
I ask him what for, but the soldier says nothing more. According to what a British journalist
familiar with army activities tells me later, it is so that when a Taliban fighter is captured
they can check the data base and find out what village he is from. Evidently the data canalso be useful for targeting air strikes.
“Humanitarian Aid” as an Instrument
I asked “Alpha’s” commanding officer about the aid project.
“Finding the Taliban is extremely difficult. They blend in with the local population.
However, if we can turn the local people into our allies through the aid we give them, they
are likely to report them to us. This is one of our ultimate objectives.” No longer relying
exclusively on military attacks, the US army is changing its strategy and attempting to win
the people over through humanitarian aid.
Yet recalling that man’s frightened eyes, I cannot think that the strategy is succeeding.
Many Afghans regard the United States as an aggressor. Their distrust of Americans cannot
be wiped away so simply. The commanding officer also says that the aid will serve to build
a better Afghanistan. However, this is a vision of Afghanistan’s future projected by theUnited States, a vision whose support by the Afghans is rather doubtful. I cannot help
thinking that for the US army, the beautiful words “humanitarian aid” have become an
instrument of aggression.
Ignorance Kills
Questioning US Soldiers
I arrived at the US military base Salerno in east Afghanistan’s Khost province. Camp Salerno,
which adjoins the provincial capital also called Khost, is one of the main bases on theeastern front. In the early days of the US invasion it was subjected to frequent rocket
attacks by insurgent groups and so acquired the inglorious nickname “Rocket City. I stayed
here waiting for permission to accompany the troops on their front line mission. Though I
had been led to think that I would be able to start working outside the base right away, I
ended up waiting for ten full days. I used that time to talk with many new recruits. I
wanted to know what sort of thoughts led young people to become soldiers. Many young

Shirakawa: Invasion In the Name of Humanitarian Aid82

men and women are in the army. I wanted to know why.
Why They Became Soldiers
The first soldier I interviewed was a youth of twenty-one. The officer in charge of public
relations brought him in. I was told he was an Officer Cadet attached to headquarters.
Evidently his father is a military man and his goal is to become a splendid soldier like hisfather. He is not afraid of the Taliban, and is filled with soldierly pride. He says he has comehere in order to bring peace and reconstruction to Afghanistan. He sounds just like amilitary spokesman. I’d like to hear something a little closer to his true feelings. During
interviews, almost all the answers are like this. The army’s media education is thorough.
The content of the questions must be submitted in advance. Because the PR officer ispresent, even one-on-one conversation is difficult. The army permits reporting under its
auspices because this is to its advantage. They will never show anything that might be to its
disadvantage. But they are dealing with people. At times real feelings happen to spill over.
A woman soldier from a minority background talks with me inside a car as she guides mearound the base. “I want to go home. I didn’t want to join the army. I got in at seventeen,right after leaving high school. At seventeen you can’t sign the enlistment papers by
yourself. My mama just went ahead and signed them. I want to go back soon.” The UnitedStates has a system that allows those who join the military to attend university nearly freeof charge, so many join up for that reason. This young woman comes from a poor and small
town. Among the developed nations, the United States is the country with the greatest
disparity between rich and poor. For those born in provincial towns and villages it isdifficult to rise economically. If they hope for a better life, joining the army – dangerous
though it is – offers the only way out. America’s reason for stationing troops in Afghanistan
is “to save Afghanistan.” Everyone says it unanimously. But do teenagers who can hardly
control their lives risk those lives to join the army “to save Afghanistan?”
A 19-year old Hispanic woman soldier I interviewed at Camp Salerno says it without
hesitation: “I don’t know anything about the Taliban, or others like them. All I know is thatthey are bad people.”
She is not shy about her motives. “I joined the army because I wanted to get out of the little
Texas town that I’m from. My friends said I’d gone crazy. But I don’t care.”
She joined the army at eighteen. Seventeen or eighteen – these are still children. They enter
the army before they are capable of judging things as adults. Last year alone two hundred
and twenty US soldiers died in Afghanistan. There is no guarantee that she will not be next.
Big Leagues and TV GamesThe atmosphere is not in the least soldierly. Nearly all the talk is about big league sports
and TV games. Inside the base, they have almost no contact with Afghans.
Even on patrols, the only time they leave the base, they only see the town through the thickbulletproof glass of an armored vehicle. I suddenly recall the words of an Afghan friend:“The Americans intend to massacre us.” His overly intense way of speaking stays strongly
in my memory. But perhaps it is not so. The American soldiers’ minds are mostly occupied
with thoughts of big league sports and home. Not merely ignorant about Afghanistan, they
are indifferent to it. Yet every year many thousands of Afghans are killed by US armed
attacks. It may be a commonplace to say that “ignorance kills.” Yet it is an indisputable factthat the US military is killing Afghans on a massive scale.

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A Prayer For Husband and Son Killed by an Air Strike
Mother Zuraiha has spread a mat on top of the snow, and is trying to warm her body as best
she can by exposing it to sunlight. She lives alone in a small tent. The tent, such as it is, is acrude thing made not from vinyl but from patched scraps of cloth. There is nothing inside
the tent but a slender wooden pole and thin bedding. The temperature is just below
freezing. Her body motionless, Mother Zuraiha is praying to God ever so quietly. Mother
Zuraiha lives on a vacant lot called Chamara Babrak in north Kabul. Many refugees live
nearby in the tents they have put up. Three hundred refugee families moved here in
November of last year. All are from the village of Hashur in Helmand province, a region offierce fighting. Following last November’s American and British air strikes, the villagers
fled for their lives. The US army’s objective in occupying the country is evidently to “rescue
and reconstruct Afghanistan.” At least that is what they say. But not a single person who
lives in this camp believes their words.
Mother Zuraiha’s Story
What happened in your village? I ask.
Mother Zuraiha tells me, tears trickling down her face.
That day, Mother Zuraiha and her son Naser, almost 23, were washing their donkey in theyard. Her husband was drinking tea inside the house. From the other side of the mountains,
they heard the sound of an airplane. Since many US troops are deployed in the area, she did
not pay it much attention. Suddenly there was a terrific explosion. The following instant
Mother Zuraiha found herself lying next to a pile of rubble. The house had been smashed topieces. She searched for her son. He should have been right next to her. He was lying quite a
distance away. She shook her son to wake him up, but he did not respond. With much effort
she lifted him in her arms and saw some of his brain protruding from his head. She sought
her neighbors’ help in trying to save her husband. But they were all running about in
confusion, and her voice did not reach them. Even now when she has left her village, herhusband’s body remains crushed beneath their house.
As she spoke, she said the word “tikatikadon” any number of times. In Dali, the word means“air strike.” Each time she utters this all too common word, her face becomes distorted with
pain. Mother Zuraiha herself was wounded. The air strike left injuries over her whole body.
Why was your village attacked?
“Would a woman like me understand why? We’re ordinary peasants. Now I’m just so sadthat I lost my husband and son.”
What do you think about the foreign army?
“I don’t understand why they do such heartless things. But they probably trust too much intheir own strength.”
Mother Zuraiha continues“Here I’m just praying for my husband and son. If someone brings me food, I’ll eat it. If noone brings it, I’ll sit here hungry. Life here is terrible. Sometimes I think it would be better
for me to die. How good it would’ve been if I’d been able to die the day my husband died.
Life here is truly miserable. Thank you for listening to me, my son.”She calls me her son. In Afghanistan one calls male neighbors to whom one feels close “son.”
Finding even recollections of the past events hateful, Mother Zuraiha says nothing more.
This year Afghanistan has been hit by an unusually severe cold wave, and more than 1,100

Shirakawa: Invasion In the Name of Humanitarian Aid

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people have died throughout the country. In Kabul too, late night temperatures drop as low
as minus 30 degrees Celsius [minus 22 F]. I wonder if Mother Zuraiha will be able tosurvive the winter.
Dropping bombs and drinking cola
Have US soldiers ever tried to imagine the aftermath of an air strike? Most likely they havenot. Pilots take off from the base and fly to the location they have been told to fly to. They
push a button, the bombs drop and go off with a bang. They return to base, drink a coke,and go to bed. Though they are in Afghanistan, they never come in contact with Afghanistan.
But air strike victims like Mother Zuraiha certainly exist. The soldiers are completely
insulated from that reality.
Mother Zuraiha is one of a multitude of refugees. This year too, as the snow melts, thefighting is intensifying. Will ignorant soldiers resume dropping their bombs and go on
increasing the number of victims like Grandmother Zuraiha?
Shirakawa Toru is a journalist-photographer who covers the Afghanistan War for Asia Press
International.
This article appeared in Shukan Kin’yobi on July 25, August 1, and September 19, 2008.
This article was translated for the Asia-Pacific Journal by Zjelko Cipris. Zeljko Cipris teaches
Asian Studies and Japanese at the University of the Pacific in California and is a Japan Focus
associate. He is co-author with Shoko Hamano of Making Sense of Japanese Grammar, andtranslator of Ishikawa Tatsuzo’s Soldiers Alive and of A Flock of Swirling Crows and Other
Proletarian Writings, a collection of works by Kuroshima Denji.

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The main official reason that Japan supported the American-led war in Iraq was to help
Iraqi civilians. Yet in 2004, when five Japanese civilians offering their own services to Iraqi
and Japanese people were taken hostage in Iraq, several members of the Japanese
government sharply criticized their presence in Iraq. The first three Japanese civilians were
held for 8 days, and the other two for 3 days. Video footage in Iraq of the first trio,
restrained with knives held to their necks, offered a glimpse of Japanese citizens caught up
in the violence of war, and tested Japan’s commitment to the American-led effort: thecaptors accused them of being spies, shouted “No Koizumi” and threatened to execute thetrio if Japan failed to pull its troops out of Iraq within three days. Through intervention by
the Islamic Clerics Association as well as other Japanese leaders, including the VAWW-Net
Japan (Violence Against Women in War-Network Japan), foreign minister Kawaguchi
Yoriko, and others working behind the scenes, the captors were persuaded to release them.
Announcing their decision, the captors cited “common ground” with the victims, andcompared the U.S. bombing of Fallujah in Iraq to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. Clearly
one issue for their captors was whether Japan was a firm supporter of the USA or was“detachable” as a common Asian nation. These five citizens were fortunate,18 but the
kidnapping of foreigners in Iraq and their videotaped supplications became a common
tragic motif of the Iraq conflict. From the start of the Iraq war in 2003 until the end of 2005,
about 425 non-Iraqis were kidnapped, 18 percent of whom were executed.
Within Japan, however, more than their capture, the big political issue was theunwelcome homecoming given to the five uninjured survivors. The victims and their family
members were pressured to apologize for the transgression of traveling independently toIraq, and the government required them to pay back some of their repatriation expenses.
In the “moral ending” of the media story that unfolded, they should have had greater
personal responsibility (jiko sekinin), meaning working through the Japanese government
or not at all. Imai Noriaki aroused the most curiosity. Why would an 18-year old travel to a
war zone, and why did his family allow it? The young humanitarian explained his thinking
in a book translated and excerpted here as “Why I Went to Iraq: Reflections of aJapanese Hostage.” Simply put, Imai wanted to gather first-hand information on war
victims for his work in the Coalition for the Abolition of Depleted Uranium (DU). He and his
family believed that his fellow traveler and friend, aid worker Takato Nahoko, had enoughexperience in Iraq to be an effective guide. As Norma Field explains in her introduction,
young people such as Imai and Takato wanted to convey war’s brutality to other Japanese
in a way unmediated by conventional or official reportage. Their actions challenged thehonesty of the hawkish members of the Japanese government and their portrayal of the“war at home.”

18 In July 2015, one of the hostages, journalist Yasuda Jumpei, returned to the Middle East and is believed tobe held hostage in Syria by the jihadist group al-Nusra Front or possibly transferred to ISIS.

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Why I Went to Iraq. Reflections of a Japanese Hostage
Imai Noriaki
Introduced by Norma Field
Translated by Scott Mehl, Ayumu Tahara, Ariya, and Norma Field
December 1, 2007
http://apjjf.org/-Norma-Field/2620/article.html
The December 2003 deployment of Self-Defense Force troops to Iraq by the Koizumi
administration took Japan closer to the practical repudiation of the non-belligerancy
principle of Article 9 than any prior move in its more than half-century of existence. Of course,
as the very existence of "self-defense forces" attests, Article 9 had already been subjected toconsiderable abuse by interpretation, virtually since inception. Nevertheless, the deployment
to Samawah was controversial. It stirred visible opposition in the beginning even though itsoon faded, at least from public view. Thus is a status quo created.
When three young Japanese were captured and held hostage for eight days in April of 2004,
however, with withdrawal of the troops made the condition for their release, controversy
erupted with a vengeance. Once they were released, however, relief was quickly overwhelmedby hostility. Encouraged by the mass media, members of the general public and politicians
vented their wrath on the young people and by extension, their demanding families who had
caused so much "trouble" through their "selfish" actions. Quite apart from sanctimonious
pronunciations about "personal responsibility," the government, by disclosing the public sums
spent on the hostages, including stiff reimbursement fees for official return transport that it
insisted upon, effectively reinforced the image of the three as thoughtless trouble-makers. And
last but hardly least, the Internet, especially the anonymous 2-Channel discussion board,
played a memorable role in fanning the flames of furor. Ironically, it was a statement fromthen Secretary of State Colin Powell about the importance of risk-taking that had a quelling
effect.
The extraordinary display of national hostility that was the "hostage incident" (hitojichi jiken),
as it has been called, condenses a number of factors worth teasing out. Social relations andthe invocation of a national community on the Internet are an obvious one. Although the issueof troop deployment itself was eclipsed, the response to the hostage incident suggests thekinds of issues ranging from the strategic to the psychological that are little articulated in the
struggle over Article 9. Neither a culturalist analysis (Japanese are hierarchical, anyone who
violates authority is punished), as offered by Onishi Norimitsu in the New York Times, nor acircumscribed political one (it was Koizumi who had staked his career on troop dispatch, andresponsibility for any harm befalling Japanese citizens as a consequence had to be shifted
elsewhere) as effectively laid out by Philip Brasor in the Japan Times, 1 can be more than abeginning to understand the phenomenon. We need to take into account long-term
frustrations with the economy as well as the demonstrable lack of "personal responsibility" on
the part of government officials through the years of the thinning social safety net (thepension scandal—of nonpayment by high officials—would break later in the same month as
the hostage incident) in order to grapple with the character and intensity of the backlash
greeting the three, as well as the lack of sympathy for the young man (Koda Shosei) who wasJapan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

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captured and beheaded in November of 2004. We would also need to consider how theamorphous yet pervasive sense of a society that had lost its purpose after the postwar
recovery, miracle, and bubble and recession found expression in this moment.
The most thorough structural analysis, one taking into account both general conditions andthose specific to Japan, would, however, be wanting if it failed to reflect on the nature of the
rupture that the incident precipitated. In a war zone more and more considered too
dangerous by international news agencies and establishment reporters, it was left tofreelance journalists literally taking their lives into their hands to produce reports
independent of official sources. Of the three Japanese hostages, Koriyama Soichiro (then 32),
was a freelance photojournalist; Takato Nahoko (34) had experience working with Baghdad
streetchildren; and Imai Noriaki (18), who had called himself a freelance journalist from hishigh school days, wanted to investigate depleted uranium (DU) munitions. Each was driven bya need to see for him or herself what was actually going on and acted to realize thatdesire. Our bureaucratized world counts on the inertia yielded by everyday busyness toenforce its conventions. Routine discourages the very experience of the desire to "see foroneself" outside the institutions of consumption, notably tourism. To witness young people
who had actually followed through on that desire must have been breathtaking to some andinfuriating to others. There is something deeply unsettling about recognizing that it is notnecessary to go along with the pretense that the world is as described, and to see actual
individuals, not so different from those around us, making that breach at great personalrisk. The anonymity of the Internet attacks offers a telling contrast.
In the three years since the incident, the three have gone on with their own lives. Imai, who
was only 18 at the time, is understandably most visibly in the throes of self-definition. 2 As acollege student, he has worked hard to involve himself in the community, starting up a portalinternet site with fellow students. Through his interviews and volunteering, he has taken up
such issues as local veterans' war memories, intersex, and the global water crisis. Recently, as
if coming full circle, he has been forming ties with the Muslim student community, learning
about their religious practices and everyday life in a provincial Japanese city. If there is any
basis for characterizing Imai's decision to enter Iraq in spring of 2003 as naive, among otherqualities, then his writings and subsequent conduct suggest that it should be understood as awillful, indeed, purposeful naivete.
Part 1 below excerpts from his book, Why I Went to Iraq.3 The first section recounts his own
research on the effects of DU. The citizen group to which he belonged decided to produce a
picture book in order to make a broad appeal on the dangers of DU and selected him to go
to Iraq to investigate conditions first-hand. Here there seems to be a collective naivete about
what might be learned from a brief visit by an amateur; the assumptions and goals areincommensurate with the gravity of such travel at that moment. It is as if Imai's individual
needs and the wish of the group to do something coalesced, and Imai became the bearer of
purposeful naivete. The second selection gives a vivid account of the days of captivity. Part 3 isa short account by Imai's grandmother, whom he calls "the person I respect most in theworld." Part 4 is the first of a two-part article written by Imai two years after the incident
that recounts his efforts to meet with his anonymous critics. After his traumatic returnto Japan, Imai spent seven months in the UK for language study. Upon his return, he opened
the hate mail that had accumulated at home and painstakingly inputted the contents into hisImai: Why I Went to Iraq

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computer in an attempt to grasp the nature of the anger directed at him and the others. Part
5 consists of selections from his blog entries from September 2006, February 2007, andDecember 2007.
Parf 2, the only selection not principally concerned with Imai, calls for separate
comment. It is an English translation of a letter written at the time of the hostage crisis by
the friend of a member of the Violence Against Women in War Japan Network (VAWWNet Japan, a group that has been active in seeking justice for former comfort women). It
was sent to Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, and ten thousand copies were distributed in
Fallujah and Ramadi. It is reproduced here with the permission of Ms. Hosoi Akemi, the
VAWW-Net member who posted it to the list. First and foremost, it is stunning in its
difference from the discourse of the mainstream media inasmuch as the hostage-takers
are addressed as brothers and fellow-believers. This difference resonated with members of
the VAWW-Net Japan listserv: as one of them posted, "I've been referring to the hostagetakers as criminals, following the Japanese government and media, but I've stopped doing
that."
If the Internet rage directed at the hostages is one representation of this moment inpostwar Japanese history, this letter is quite another. It reflects the fruition of some of themost promising developments in postwar Japan: (1) the commitment to peace dating backto the earliest period after the end of the war; (2) the disposable income from the decadesof "peace and prosperity" that meant young people traveled widely, and beyond Europe
and the U.S.; and (3), most immediately, the grass-roots ties developed through the diffuse
effects of (1) and (2). When people talk about generations, they are talking about
history. Ms. Hosoi notes that the overwhelming number of Japanese who have involved
themselves in Iraq are in the latter half of their thirties, the generation that took the valueof international friendship for granted. (This makes Imai Noriaki something of an
exception.) She speculates that the conservative reorganization of education has had theeffect of making younger people more inward-looking and at the same time,
contemptuous of other Asian countries. One of the common criticisms directed at the
hostages was "Why don't you stick to Japan if you want to do volunteer work?"
We must not, finally, in our concern to analyze the crushing hostility directed at the
hostages, neglect to acknowledge the outpouring of support during their captivity andupon their return, so obscured by media fascination with the attacks. Seeing an image of
Imai's face, the lawyer Nakajima Michiko said to herself, "That's me, fifty years ago," andrushed to join others to sit in at the Prime Minister's residence.4 Indeed, we mightunderstand the cumulative aspirations for a new Japan and a new world on the part ofpostwar generations expressed in support for the hostages as responding to the will-tohope inchoately expressed in the radical naivete of their act.

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Supporters gathered in Tokyo
1 Onishi's article may be read here,

Brasor's here (both accessed 19 December 2007).
2 The three have written their reflections on their hostage experience in the stunningphotojournal Days Japan (Vol. 4, No. 9, September 2007). Takato Nahoko grew up
in Chitose, Hokkaido, a major station for Self-Defense Forces. Work with Iraqi children,
including providing medical supplies and caring for homeless youth, led her to make anumber of trips to Iraq prior to her capture. The ties she made through this work translated
into rescue efforts by Iraqis (see Part 2, below), such as by the owner of the Internet cafe whooffered it as the center of the rescue mission. For a fine interview in the Japan
Times, see here (accessed 28 November 2007). Takato is the author of two books, Aishiteru
tte do iuno? ikiru imi o sagasu tabi no tochu de (What does "I love you" mean? On the road insearch of the meaning of life; Bungeisha 2002); and Senso to heiwa: soredemo irakujin okirai ni narenai (War and peace: I still can't hate the Iraqis; Kodansha 2004). Her blog may
be read here (accessed 10 January 2008).
Koriyama Soichiro is a prizewinning documentary photographer, working primarily in the
Middle East and Southeast Asia since 2001. For examples of his work, visit here (accessed 4
December 2007). Koriyama is the author of several books, including Mirai tte nan desu ka:
boku ga ichiban toritakatta mono (What's this thing called "the future"? What I most wanted
to capture) and Senso no ato ni kita mono: kambojia ga utsusu jidai (What followed upon
war: Our age as reflected by Cambodia), both from Shin Nihon Shuppan (2004 and 2005:)
and Kizuitara kamera baka (When I came to, I was addicted to the camera; Ei Shuppansha,
2006).
3 Boku ga iraku e itta wake (Tokyo: Commons, 2004).

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4 For Nakajima's own antiwar activism, see a Japan Focus article "Gendered Labor Justice andthe Law of Peace," Another important individual, among many, who dedicated himself tomobilizing support was Minowa Noboru (1924-2006), eight-term LDP lower house
representative from Hokkaido who served, among other capacities, as parliamentary viceminister of the (then) Defense Agency and postal minister. He declared Prime Minister
Koizumi's dispatch of the SDF to Iraq unconstitutional and mobilized plaintiffs from aroundthe country for a citizens' lawsuit. At the time of the hostage capture, he sent a message to Al
Jazeera offering himself as a substitute. Norma Field
PART 1 Why I Went to Iraq
From Chapter 2
The attested dangers of depleted uranium (DU) shells
Even in Japan there were incidents in ’95 and ’96 in which American soldiers at a U.S. Armyshooting range on Torishima (north of Kumejima, in Okinawa Prefecture) fired depleted
uranium (DU) rounds "by mistake." The U.S. Army tried to gather up all the DU shrapnel
but we still don’t know whether they got it all.
As for the specific dangers of DU, there are reports by doctors in Samawa, Iraq, where theSelf-Defense Forces were deployed, and by Gulf War veterans. I took these up in my
FAX Reports.
"According to many doctors at the Samawa Obstetrics and Gynecology Clinic, the cancer
rate among children started increasing rapidly from 1991, and leukemia and brain tumors
have become three to four times as frequent. On top of that, the rates of miscarriage andabnormal deliveries have doubled or tripled" (DU Report 2).
Carol Picou, who enlisted as a U.S. Army nurse during the Gulf War, describes thesymptoms of radiation sickness as follows:*Our babies [i.e., babies of returned Gulf War soldiers] are born without thyroids.
Veterans exposed to radiation have been getting thyroid cancer. *We'll have to takesynthroid [a thyroid hormone] for the rest of our lives. *Doctors are suspicious that
there are squamous cancer cells growing in my uterus. They’ve made me undergo
twelve tests already and I've been ordered to repeat those tests. My muscles haveatrophied.
There are times when I can no longer control my bladder or my bowels. *The army
issued me diapers and said I could catheterize myself for the rest of my life. In fact,
I’ve been catheterizing myself since 1992 and wearing diapers for just as long.
Our babies are born with congenital birth defects. Since coming back to the U.S. I’ve
taken all the medicine my doctors have given me. *I was afraid I would have a childborn with birth defects and had my tubes tied. Pictures of Gulf War babies with birthdefects appeared in Life magazine. *Deformed babies born in San Antonio in our
support group of 125 veterans look like the babies born in Iraq. One of them had
only one ear and one eye and his heart was on the wrong side of his chest. (from DU
Report 21, portions revised.) 1

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While I was looking into the problem of DU shells and nuclear contamination, I waslearning too about the dangers of exposure to other forms of radiation, and what I found
was mind-boggling. In December 1949 America intentionally scattered iodine 131 from anuclear facility to investigate the effects on the human body. In the old Soviet Union, too,they put radioactive substances into a river to test the effects it had on the towns along theriver. And in the areas around uranium mines there are adverse effects from radioactive
contamination.
What got me started, then, was the DU shells, but I was beginning to have questions about
atomic power and nuclear energy as well. From then on, I wanted to tackle the issue of
atomic energy.
Why was so little attention given in Japan to the problem of DU shells during the Gulf
War? Alternatively, why weren't the pros and cons of economic sanctions against Iraq more
widely debated? It’s incomprehensible to me. The Gulf War started when I was six, so I
don’t even remember any images of it. Certainly there were images that I saw after the fact,
but at the time I didn’t see or know anything. Of course, it would be quite astonishing if a
six-year-old were to have had any interest in it.
Deciding to go to Iraq—and persuading my family
On the 31st of January, 2004, the "NO!! Small-scale Nuclear Weapon (DU) Sapporo Project"hosted a talk, which I attended, by Ms. Sato Maki of the JVC (Japan International Volunteer
Center), titled "Iraqi Children Now: The Effects of DU Shells."
On February 13th the inaugural meeting of the Campaign for Abolition of Depleted Uranium
was held in Tokyo. The campaign was started in response to a call from the attendees of thefirst meeting of the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons held
inHamburg, Germany, in October of 2003 (see the website).
At a meeting the day before, we discussed the possibility of putting together a picture bookabout DU shells, and the Sapporo group agreed to take on the
project. The Sapporo members were all in favor; they thought that in order to make apicture book, someone should go to Iraq and see first-hand and photograph the Iraqi
people’s food, their clothing, the scenery.
"So who’s going to go?""Why don't you go, Imai?""If Imai goes and writes about what he sees, then it'll be more likely to appeal to young
people."And I was in fact quite interested in the culture and the way of life of the Iraqi people andwanted to go. But I also had serious doubts. For starters, when I told my family that I
wanted to go to Iraq, they were vehemently opposed. The previous summer, when I had
told them I wanted to go to the Congo, they hadn't let me go. "It costs too much to getthere." "It’s too dangerous." "You’re too inexperienced." And as a matter of fact, I didn't
have any money.

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This time, whenever we talked about how things were dangerous in Iraq, everybody would
get more and more anxious. Persuading my family was not at all easy. Seriously, it really
got to me! "If we don't take any risks, we're not going to get anywhere," I explained . . .
This time Ms. Takato would be going with me. She and my mother started talking to eachother and began researching. Ms. Takato tested me, asking me pointblank:"You won’t be free to go wherever you want in Baghdad, and you won't be able to takepictures freely. Are you sure you want to go?""I know I could die from gunfire or be killed by suicide bombers. I've thought about thesethings and made up my mind. I’ll listen to you. I'll be cautious about whatever I do."And so I got Ms. Takato to agree first. After that, my mother and grandmother gave me theOK. My 84-year-old grandmother said, "Noriaki, you want to be a journalist, and you’ll bewith Ms. Takato, so go, and get the experience." I was moved by these words, thinking how
strong she was, my grandmother who was born in the Taisho era.

Takato Nahoko
My big brother Yosuke—the guardian of the family—said, "You have no reason to be goingto Iraq. Why should you be the one to go?"My father was totally opposed. He was like, "Do
whatever you want!" I think he might have given up on me because I wouldn't listen to him.
On March 13th Ms. Takato gave a talk called "Iraq Through a Volunteer’s Eyes: A Message
from the Children of Iraq." There again I spoke with her and reaffirmed my desire to go
to Iraq.
I was even prepared to die
In the end my decision to go to Iraq had my family’s full support, which made me feel bothgrateful and relieved.
Of course, the decision was mine alone. Not only was there the risk of dying in a suicidebombing or being caught in a crossfire, but there was also the chance that I would be
exposed to radiation from DU shells, as I knew from talking with people who had
experience covering Iraq. To tell the truth, I was worried about whether things would beokay if I had children five or ten years down the road. But the only thing for it was to makethe effort. I would take the risk and go.

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I planned to investigate the adverse effects of depleted uranium bombs and go on a JVC[Japan International Volunteer Center] tour of the hospitals during my ten days in Iraq. I’dlearn about the Iraqis’ culture and way of life under Ms. Takato’s guidance. I had notplanned to go to Basra since it was too far and too dangerous. But thinking back now, I see
that no matter where you went, Iraq was dangerous. Ms. Takato said, "You might die, too,so you had better prepare yourself for that possibility."
I understood this well enough myself, and argued about it with my parents before making
my decision. What I couldn't foresee was the possibility of being taken hostage …
Once I’d made up my mind to go I took a part-time job to supplement the thousand dollars
I’d been saving annually. I also got some money from fundraising, and I borrowed somefrom my parents. A round-trip flight to Amman (Jordan): seventy-eight thousand yen[around $750]. The airline: Russia’s Aeroflot (famous for cheap flights, bad service, andinconvenient stopovers). I thought three hundred dollars would be enough for ten days’
travel expenses. In addition, there was the cost of film, so I estimated needing aroundfourteen hundred dollars altogether. Given the scale of my economy, this was about thelimit.
I spent three days in Tokyo before my departure. I went to meetings for the Campaign for
Abolition of Depleted Uranium, met media figures to tell them of my plan to go to Iraq andtake photos for our picture book. To keep costs down, I looked for a cheap hotel.
Chapter 3
Eight Days of Being Held "Hostage" (And I Have No Bitterness)
Amman via Moscow
April fourth, a twelve o’clock flight from Narita Airport to Amman, Jordan. My first trip
abroad alone, so I’m nervous. I’m flying Aeroflot Airlines and they don’t speak much
English. When I stay overnight in Moscow to change planes, my passport is taken away,
which makes me really nervous.
"So what happens to me if I lose my passport? Probably get deported immediately. Thatwould be just great."
When I go down to the hotel lobby, they immediately tell me to go back to my room. I've
gotta say, Moscow sucks.
In a waiting room in the Moscow airport I get to know a Ukrainian who speaks
practically no English. I think he says he’s going toAmman to do construction-related
work. We talk (?) for two hours and swap watches. He said his watch was given him by
the president of Turkmenistan; it stopped working right away. My watch cost me nine
hundred eighty yen [under ten dollars] so it’s no big loss. Maybe this counts as"international exchange."
My plane touches down in Amman on the evening of the fifth at 8:40 p.m. They’ve lost
one of the bags I checked. It’s the bag that had the paper on which I’d written theaddress of the hotel where I’d be staying, the Farah Hotel, so that’s a problem. Rightaway I hail a cab and tell the driver the name of the hotel before I forget it. Still nervous,Imai: Why I Went to Iraq

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though, since he could always take me to the wrong hotel. What’s more, the driver
doesn’t speak much English. On top of that I’m starting to lose my temper; but somehow
I make it to the Farah Hotel in one piece.
It’s safe if we bypass Fallujah
Meet up with Ms. Takato at the hotel. At first our plan was to leave that night. But
there’s the chance that Fallujah will be blockaded, and when the taxi driver tells us it’srisky, we decide to wait till the following night.
On the day of the sixth, then, Ms. Takato focuses on gathering information. She checks
Yahoo News at an internet café; she listens to what the drivers are saying at the cab
stand; she gets the news from the capital, Baghdad. She buys a cell phone. Lunch is ricewith chicken—something like pilaf—and mulukhiyya soup. It all tastes incredible. At
the Cliff Hotel we happen to run into Koriyama Soichiro,3 a cameraman just coming infrom Bangkok, and we all decide to go to Baghdad together.

Book jacket, Koriyama Soichiro's
What's this thing called "the future"?
There’s a regular bus from Amman to Baghdad, a thousand kilometers away as the crowflies. Mr. Koriyama had ridden this bus before and recommends we take it. But the ride
is long. Even under ordinary circumstances it can take more than twenty hours, butwith the detour around the Fallujah area and the long wait at the border it can takethirty hours or more. We decide to go by taxi, and Ms. Takato asks the employees at
the Cliff Hotel, where she's been staying, to make the arrangements.
Now, just in terms of safety, I think the bus would be the best way to go. We’d be riding
with the locals. Besides, bus fare is about the same as cab fare for three.
Mr. Koriyama said, "I’m going alone if I have to. War zones are always dangerous. If you
start worrying about safety, you’ll never go."There were some kids who had hepatitis that Ms. Takato wanted to take to thehospital. I felt like I wanted to go, too, but I decided to leave the final decision up toJapan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

them. Ms. Takato hesitated, but in the end she said, "Let’s go to Baghdad." The biggest
factor in our decision was the cab driver's saying that if we bypassed Fallujah, we’d besafe.
An easy border crossing
When we’re packed and ready we go to the internet café again to check the latest news,
then leave. The clock reads 10:30 p.m. Cab fare for one to Baghdad is around thirty
dollars. There’s a chance Fallujah will be blockaded, but even if we bypass it we’ll bereaching our destination in around thirteen or fourteen hours, the driver says.
We’re nervous, of course, but we’re reassured when the driver says we’ll be okay if we
bypass Fallujah. It’s like we’ve been given our authorization papers or something. The
driver has some citrus fruit and sweets for us, but we don’t stop to eat, and we make dowith just water. The driver doesn’t speak English so Ms. Takato speaks in Arabic withhim.
We know at this point sporadic fighting has broken out in Fallujah, but we couldn't
know that a real battle is taking place. Our plan is to go back if the border is blocked. We
learned later that right after we left, the situation in Fallujah deteriorated rapidly.
There aren’t many cars on the road and there are stretches when we don’t see any cars
at all. Inside Jordan there were checkpoints on the road all the time but our driverwould just wave and pass on through—we never had to stop once. As we approach theborder, though, we start seeing more and more cars. When we get to the border,
there're too many parked cars to count.
Strangely, though, our taxi drives on by all the cars parked on the side of the road andeases right up to the gate. I wonder if the other drivers are napping. It’s past two in themorning. The electricity is off in the border inspection office. We hand over our
passports, pay ten Jordanian dinar (about fifteen hundred yen), and get through the
Jordanian side of the border with no problem at all. It's almost disappointing.
From there it’s a two- or three-minute drive to the Iraqi side of the border, and theAmerican army is nowhere to be seen. Our passports are checked again and we take a
few minutes to fill out a simple entry questionnaire. We’ve heard a rumor that there
might be AIDS testing at the border, which makes us worry about possible infection
from reused needles, but no AIDS testing is being done.
To lower the chances of being robbed we rest for a few hours at the Iraq border andwait for the sun to come up, and before six in the morning on April 7th we set out
again. I will never forget the beauty of the sun as it rose above the horizon thatmorning. As far as the eye could see there was nothing except power lines far in the
distance that were all bent and sagging. The scene left a vivid impression.
Filling up at a roadside gas station. There’s a restaurant there, and people aregathering. We pull over and park, and Ms. Takato and Mr. Koriyama get out and talkwith some children and take pictures of them. I stay in the vehicle and keep watch over
our bags. I was able to take a bunch of pictures at the entrance to the restaurant, too,
but the film was confiscated during our captivity.

95

Imai: Why I Went to Iraq

Once we’re in Iraq we drive faster, around 160 kilometers per hour. Our spirits lift at
the thought that we’ll be in Baghdad soon.
"Where are those three from?"
American army vehicles and hundreds of troops come into view as we approach
Fallujah. Our taxi exits off the highway and we fill up for the third time. It’s a little
before eleven in the morning. There are two lines of waiting cars; the lines must be
thirty or forty meters long. There are no houses in the area.
Our taxi gets in line and right away a boy comes up and asks the driver:"Where are those three from?"
I was surprised—I hadn’t known he was there, right by the car. The driver answers,"They’re Japanese."
Then the boy goes running headlong back up the road leading back to thehighway. There’s a white car parked there, and the boy tells whoever’s inside what he’s
found out. Our driver wonders aloud why the boy would ask such a question, but I don’t
give the matter a second thought. Ms. Takato had left the taxi and was playing withsome of the kids from the cars nearby, and now she comes back. I wave to the children
and think how cute they are.
Japanese, bad
That's when it happened. Ms. Takato gasps. When I turn around there’s a group ofpeople standing right in front of us with rocket shells and Kalashnikov rifles. Their faces
are all covered.
Their car has pulled up alongside our cab, and they make us move the taxi to the side of
the road. Our cab is then surrounded by a group of about a dozen armed militiamen,
who are joined by another larger group of probably several dozen who have gotten out
of some of the cars waiting to gas up. They are talking loudly, but I don’t understandwhat they’re saying.
"Yaabaanii, muu zain! (Japanese, bad!)" one of them shouts, drawing a finger across his
throat. I remember his face clearly. He was shouting as if he'd lost it. The others don’t
stop him. They only look on.
Ms. Takato shouts "La! La! La! (No!)," but it’s no good.
I don’t remember anything clearly except the man who shouted "Yaabaanii, muu zain!" I
was stunned.
The driver is doing everything he can to persuade them to stop. Ms. Takato is saying"Shuwaiya! (Wait!)" over and over, gesturing frantically, but they pay no attention. They
tear open our bags and take our passports. Same with our cameras and wallets. Thenthey take the bags too. Not one of them speaks English. I’ve never witnessed anything
like this before, so it goes without saying that I am utterly terrified, but I can’t lookaway. I lose sight of my surroundings, Ms. Takato and Mr. Koriyama included.

96

Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

With a gun to his face, Mr. Koriyama gets taken to the first group’s car. Ms. Takato and I
are threatened with grenades and made to get into another car. Aside from the driver,there are two masked men sitting in the passenger seat. One of the men in thepassenger seat holds up a grenade for us to see. Under the seat there’s a machinegun. The men’s bodies are wrapped in machine gun shells and grenades, just likeRambo. I have no idea how much time passed as we were sitting there, terrified, notknowing what would happen to us.
Ms. Takato is crying, and I just sit there holding her hand. I do my best not to cry, but
I’m shaking uncontrollably and I start sniffling. It really was terrifying. I’d rather notremember it.
And then I start to wonder if we’ve been captured by suicide bombers. Their clothes
make me think of the Palestinian suicide bombers I’ve seen on TV and in thenewspapers.
"Are you a spy?" "Why was the Japanese army sent here?"
Soon after, they brought Mr. Koriyama, blindfolded us, and took us somewhere. We
came to a place like a warehouse, though I don’t know exactly where it was. And thenthe interrogation began. It lasted twenty-five or thirty minutes. The man who
introduced himself as the General was asking the questions in English. It wasn't really
good English, and Ms. Takato gave almost all the answers.
I’ve forgotten practically everything they asked us. The only questions that have stayedwith me:"Are you spy?"
The other people there were asking, "Japanese army leish hon? (Why is the Japanesearmy here?)"The General was also saying, "Why do you send Japanese Army?"
Ms. Takato answered, "We’re here as humanitarian aid workers," but the General didn’t
seem to understand her. Then, in desperation, she explained her own actions, tellingthem of her affection for Iraq.
"I came to Fallujah to bring pharmaceutical supplies to the hospitals. There're somegreat kebab places in Fallujah, aren't there."I think this went on for about fifteen minutes. Little by little the conversation changed,
and the General said: "We need to do a background check on you, so if you could write
your home addresses and your email addresses. Your lives are secure. Sorry, sorry.""If you check with our hotel in *Baghdad they’ll tell you we aren’t spies," Ms. Takato
said, and the three of us wrote down our addresses for them. After the interrogation wewere served a meal. Flavored rice and chicken came heaped on a big platter. They saythat among Arabs if you share food from platters like this it means you are friends. Mr.
Koriyama said, "Relax. We’ll probably live."97Imai: Why I Went to Iraq

But while we were eating a fight broke about between the group we were with andanother group from outside. They all had furious expressions on their faces. I’d guess
the other group was telling our group to kill us. All I know is that they looked furious
and were yelling ferociously.
I think we were fortunate. The General was taking an interest in our activism, and while
we were speaking with him we had the feeling he understood us well. Had we not beenable during that first interrogation to clear ourselves of the suspicion that we werespies, without a doubt we would have been killed. I think the Iraqis who were dealing
with us were people with principle.
A frightful video shoot
After we eat, a fat man comes in with a video camera. He says something in Arabic andstarts recording. We would later find out that the images were aired all over the world
via Qatari TV, the Qatar-based satellite television station of Al-Jazeera.
All three of us were blindfolded, then they singled me out. They took the blindfold off
and held a knife to my throat. The point of that knife was in all truth right up against myneck. After brandishing the knife like that they held the barrel of a machine gun to myhead. I was the only one they did these things to. It's terrifying to feel you can be killed
any minute. There are no words to express it.
Now some men in masks start shouting, "No Koizumi! No Koizumi!"
The whole thing lasted maybe a few minutes, but for us it felt incredibly long. As soon as
they stopped recording I reflexively brought a hand up to my neck. It looked like
Mr. Koriyama was doing all right, but Ms. Takato was crying.
The video shoot began so suddenly that we became even more nervous than we alreadywere. They seemed to have asked us in Arabic to cry, but I didn’t understand it. Nor did
I know that they were showing our passports; basically, I didn’t know what was goingon. But since our voices had left us from fear, they didn’t think we'd seemed scaredenough, so they started taping a second time.
It was said later that we'd staged this whole thing. That's an unbearable accusation. We
were helpless. I never want to see that video. Not even now. I don’t want to remember it.
When the taping was finished, the militiamen said, "Sorry, sorry."
Mr. Koriyama told us afterward that the video camera looked new, probably a Sony. The
men seemed pretty used to handling a camera. We couldn't understand this, and evennow, it seems strange to me that they knew how to run a camera.

98

Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

Interrogation and dialogue

Video ShootOnce they finished taping the second time they blindfolded us again and took us
somewhere else. The first two days they treated us roughly. When they put us in the carthey shoved us inside, and once we were in they hit us when we didn’t keep our heads
down.The place they took us to was like a big meeting room. It might have been a partof someone’s private residence. Along the walls there were big wooden couches and on
the floor, rugs.
There, another interrogation began. Even the following day various group members
would come one after another asking us, "You’re spies, aren’t you?" In the first two days
we must have been interrogated four or five times. They all asked the same questions;they must have believed in all seriousness that we were spies. We thought the General
had understood our situation. Anxiety reared its head again.
The General showed up in the room a little while later and started talking to Ms. Takato
about faith.
"What do the Japanese believe in? What religion are you?""I’m a Buddhist. In Japan there's a belief that a spiritual entity resides in all the things ofthe natural world.""What are you saying? There is only one god, and that is Allah."
But little by little they come to understand what Ms. Takato is saying. "It's all right forthere to be many ways of understanding God," is the conclusion they seem to have cometo. During those tense hours I learned from the depths of my being the importance of
mutual understanding through dialogue. In the end the General said, "We’ll release you
tomorrow or the next day," and left the room.
(Of course, at this time we had no way of knowing that there was a threat to "burn us
alive," or that they were offering to release the three of us in exchange for the complete
withdrawal of the Self-Defense Forces within three days’ time.)

99

Imai: Why I Went to Iraq

Even as these dialogues were taking place we kept hearing the sounds of trenchmortars exploding. They were powerful enough to make the house shake.
Transported again at nightfall. When they removed the blindfolds we saw militiamen
equipped with Kalashnikov rifles. To my surprise, many of these men were dozing. We
rolled up in some blankets and slept, too. I believe it was around eleven o’clock.
Hopes betrayed
The second morning about ten people came to greet us one by one.
"Al-salaamu ’alaikum" ("Good day").
They seemed to be on friendly speaking terms with the militia, too. I had the impressionthat these armed men had the backing of the people.
The soldier standing guard over us gestured and conveyed to us that he was going toFallujah soon. I wonder whatever became of him. The toilet was outside so the guard
had to come, too, but he very kindly led me by the hand.
We were moved twice that day. They blindfolded us and drove us somewhere again,
and by evening we had arrived at our second room. It was dark and cramped and musty
and through the window there was just enough moonlight for us to be able to see. The
room was only some fifteen feet square and filled with things, so it felt even more
cramped. Usually our guard was in the room with us, but he went outside to sleep. Fromoutside came the sound of gunshots, ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta.
The three of us could talk to each other, but rather than speak in Japanese among
ourselves, we tried to converse in gestures with the militiaman. One soldier said to us,"My parents and children have been killed."
Once when he came back from the toilet Mr. Koriyama said, "You can see the fighting
outside. There're flashes."
Our blindfolds had been taken off so we could see the light from the bombings when we
went to the toilet. In order to see the fighting, I said, "I need to go to the toilet, too." On
the road far in the distance I could see flashes that looked like they came from rifle
fire. When I came back to the room Mr. Koriyama said, "It didn’t take long for them todrive us here so we must be circling around Fallujah. What we saw earlier must havebeen the fighting in Fallujah."
Then I thought of the soldier who had told me that morning that he was going toFallujah.
Taken to yet another place on the morning of the third day. Over those eight days wewent to eight different homes in all; there must have been a kind of network of farmers
who had offered up their houses for the purpose. And then the day came when the
General promised we would be set free.
It was a hot day. We must have ridden in the car for an hour or so. When they took off
the blindfolds and we looked around we saw trees in the far distance, but nearby there
was nothing but a sandy road. Before us there were about a dozen men we didn’t know,

100Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

holding pistols. They seemed to be saying that we weren’t going to Baghdad. When Ms.
Takato heard this, she started crying and screamed, "Let us go! You promised you’drelease us today! Give us back our things!"
Mr. Koriyama added, "Hell, ‘Muslims are good’! Isn’t what you’re doing just the same aswhat the Americans are doing?"
I felt hope slipping away and almost started to cry.
We walked down the road for a while and came to a lone house with nothing around
it. It looked to be a southern-style house, with a shingled roof and earthen walls. Havethey sold us to a different bunch?—I worried. Ms. Takato’s anger did not let up.
"They call you Mujahideen (warriors of Islam), but you’re nothing but Ali Babas(thieves)."
Seeing her explosive anger, a handful of the men had troubled looks on their faces; theysaid, "Wait three days," and left the room.
We made strong bonds but…
We spent five days in this room. The room itself was homier than the others, and thefood was better. Twice a day they would bring us dishes made with expensive
chicken. "We got it at the market," they said. An old man with deep wrinkles on his faceand a young man with beautiful eyes stood guard over us and took good care of us.
There were now no militiamen in our room so we were able to speak freely to eachother, the three of us. We all like music, so we sang all the time. We each had ourfavorite golden oldies that popped up in conversation again and again. Ms. Takato had
been in a band so she knew a lot of songs. She even gave us a medley of tunes by Pink
Lady. All three of us sang The Crystal King’s "Daitokai" ("The Big City") and H2O’s"Omoide ippai" ("Full of Memories") together. But I didn’t get to sing very much because
there were two people in the room who hated Yutaka Ozaki, my favorite, to the point ofbanning him . . . .
Around this time we started calling each other by different names. In Amman she was"Ms. Takato," but now it seemed natural to call her Nahoko. Mr. Koriyama became Soni. [Note: "So" is from the first syllable of Koriyama’s first name; "ni" means "elder
brother."] They called me Nori or Norinori. It was just the three of us so we talked all
the time. In the course of these long talks we formed strong bonds. If the three of us
hadn't been together, I don't think we would have made it psychologically. When you
share your lives like we did, you develop a profound intimacy.
Pardon the strange example, but we even got to the point where we looked at eachother’s crap in the toilet. The toilet was outside, and once you’d done your business in it
you poured water to flush. But on the fifth day my business was too big and it wouldn’t
go down the hole. We all called it the Bunkerbuster. Anyway it was big and it was nasty
and I tried to push it down with an iron pipe, but it wouldn’t go in.
"That’s enough of that," I thought, fleeing the toilet. I got back to the room with a grin on
my face and I told them what had happened. So-ni bravely headed for the toilet,

101Imai: Why I Went to Iraq

saying,"When I was in the Self-Defense Force my job was laying and removing landmines. I’ll go."He gave it his best, I’m sure, but when he came back, his face was a bit puckered. When
Nahoko went it must have been a huge mess. We called the older of our two guards andasked him to take a look—it was a crazy situation. He found a stick and used it to stir
while he poured water into the toilet—or something like that.
Being together twenty-four hours a day, we exposed our whole lives to each, so wewere more than family. On the third and fourth days we talked about our loves and Soni talked about his experiences as a truck driver. Nahoko and So-ni talked the most. But
on the fifth day it wasn’t fun anymore.
Mornings we’d wake up at eight, bedtime was eleven. In the evenings we got our lightfrom a lamp, and we had blankets and pillows. We made a conscious effort to get up andmove around, but since we didn’t really have anything to do, we ended up sitting
around most of the time. We went outside only to use the toilet. Nahoko started feelingunwell. I rubbed her shoulders and So-ni rubbed her feet and hands.
Despair and disputeOn the fifth day So-ni got a migraine so bad he couldn’t move for half the day. On thesixth day, the day we were supposed to be released, no one came. Nahoko begansobbing in despair. None of us said a word. At the time we had no way of knowing why
our release had been delayed.
For my part, I tried to hold out as best I could, but on the seventh day, when Nahoko
recovered, I grew sluggish and despondent. I couldn’t stand up and my head hurt. It wasthen that our two guards started praying for me. The three of us had gone from being
captives to guests. Of course we were not free to do just anything we pleased; still, wecame to understand the generosity of the Muslim spirit.
On the eighth day, the fourteenth of April, they finally told us they’d take us backto Baghdad. Naturally, we were elated. But they ended up saying, "Just wait two more
hours," and we weren’t released that day. . . . We left the house we’d been in for these
five days and were moved to another private residence. En route we were left to wait
for a while in a warehouse-like building; then suddenly we were being told to movequickly and crammed into a car. Everybody looked grim. I seem to remember there wasa rusted iron gate in front of the house we came to.
It was in this house that we saw pictures of our families on Al-Jazeera. They were airing
images of my older brother and Nahoko’s younger brother Shuichi with their heads
down. One of the militiamen pointed to us and said, "Famous people." This was the firsttime we realized what a stir we were causing in Japan. "Things have gotten ugly," I
thought.
After dinner the things they took from us at the beginning of our captivity werereturned. The cameras and computers and money were missing, though. The aid
supplies we had brought had all been opened, and the pencils and pens we were to102

Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

deliver to the schools had all been broken. So-ni yelled, "You are all Ali Babas. Bring us
our things by tomorrow morning, all of it."Nahoko was even more strident. "Everything we’ve been doing for the Iraqi people has
been undone. You’re ruining your own reputation."
The argument went on for two hours. Nahoko was the only one doing the talking, andshe wasn't backing down. "Isn’t there some other way? Isn’t there a way to fight without
using weapons?" she asked. They were at a loss for an answer. Because a lot of Iraqis
had in fact been dying in the war with the Americans. Their only means of fighting was
the clumsy one of using weapons. I think it was only through the violent act of taking us
captive that they could say to the world, "Look at what’s happening in Fallujah."
The morning of the next day, the fifteenth, the man called Leader brought us the missing
items. Even so, Ms. Takato’s computer and the three thousand dollars gatheredin Japan for donations didn't come back.
Free at lastThat afternoon we were taken in an ambulance to a mosque in Baghdad and finallyreleased. But even then I wondered whether we’d been taken captive again. Because
until then, every time a door opened, we were led away somewhere. That's why I
thought, not again. This time, too, we were blindfolded. When the car came to a stop, we
heard strange Japanese being spoken. It sounded like "You can stop worrying.""What is this?" I was thinking, when we were brought into a room and our blindfolds
were taken off; then I saw Kider Dia [romanization unconfirmed], the Iraqi who was
speaking Japanese, and a man who was videoing the scene. This reminded us of ourcaptivity and we asked him to stop, but he kept recording. The Al-Jazeera logo was on
the microphone. Meanwhile another man came in and said something. Diatranslated: "You’re free." Then Dia introduced us to Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi, thespokesman of the Muslim Clerics Association, explaining, "This is the man who secured
your release."
But we were in a daze. We still could not believe what was happening. Meanwhile they
proposed we drink a toast, but we still didn’t understand why. It wasn’t until we heard
Ueda Tsukasa, chargé d’affaires ad interim in Iraq, say, "It's a good thing you’reunharmed," that we finally realized we had been set free.
After this we were driven to the Japanese embassy. Thinking that such a nice car would
be an easy target, I kept my head down. We arrived at the embassy in about twenty
minutes. We went into the building under heavy guard. We were probably in highspirits; certainly we were relieved. We got to see some NHK television and once again
the gravity of our situation was apparent. At the embassy all three of us called ourfamilies. I was the only one who didn’t get through.
The three of us didn’t know what the militant group had demanded, or that the footage
they had taken had been aired. The three of us joked how bad it would have been if
they'd shown the video, but in fact that is exactly what had happened.

103Imai: Why I Went to Iraq

104

We couldn't understand why our captors didn’t release us once we’d convinced them
we weren’t spies and they'd had a chance to give the matter a lot of thought.
"It only makes them look bad, so why do they keep us hostage?"
When we got back to Japan, we learned that the period when we were held was a time
when the ceasefire agreement between the local militia and the American army was
repeatedly on the verge of breaking down, and then extended. In fact, though, largescale fighting was breaking out in Fallujah. They had probably held us captive, moving
us from place to place, both for our safety and for their own. That is what I concluded
once I got back to Japan.
After we'd calmed down a little, Nahoko asked chief Iraq ambassador Oki Masamitsu,"Aren’t they withdrawing the Self-Defense Forces?"
We had been called "Japanese army" and "spies" so many times that we believed ourcaptivity was directly related to the deployment of the Self-Defense Forces. The
ambassador answered immediately, "There can be no question of withdrawing the SelfDefense Forces from Iraq."
When Nahoko heard this answer she burst into tears. The ambassador left the room
without uttering a word.
We remembered something one of the militiamen had said right before we werereleased: "We're looking for a different way to do things, too. Can you give us any
advice?"They, too, seemed hesitant. The reason we couldn’t think ill of them, no matter what,
was that we had seen the reality in which every time you heard an airplane you
trembled and worried about an air raid, and every time there was an air raid someone
died. Had I been born in that country I might have taken up arms, too.

Takato and Imai at time of releaseJapan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

"When you get home, just be sure to apologize"Around seven o’clock that evening questioning by the Japanese police began. Two hours
each for Nahoko and me, one hour for So-ni. We were each questioned separately,
without getting to see a doctor. "We want you to cooperate so we can apprehend the
Iraqi criminals," we were told, so we complied.
Two men from the Foreign Affairs Section of the National Police Agency were in chargeof the inquiry. Nahoko and I were each questioned by one of them, then theyinterrogated So-ni. There were times when I felt we were under suspicion ofsomething. They asked us about the size of the room we were held in, the layout of therooms, the arrangement of the furniture, the surroundings, and made us draw amap. Remembering such things was the last thing we wanted to be doing at that time,
but absolutely no consideration was given to our feelings.
And then the officers started to ask if we hadn't staged the video, and I immediately
responded in the negative. At the time, I of course didn’t know that there was a theory
that it was a staged video.
The inquiry continued into the next day. Nahoko was questioned by
the Hokkaido police as well, and I got additional questioning from the [Tokyo]
Metropolitan Police Agency. Here too they explained that they needed our help "to get
the Iraqi police to catch the criminals," but that made no sense. The Iraqi people thinkthat the Iraqi police and the American army have joined forces, so there is no reason forthem to cooperate.
We spent the night of the fifteenth in an apartment next to the embassy. I watched the
BBC news there, and the top news story showed pictures of us. "What a big deal it's
become" I thought, taken aback.
The next day we flew to Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. On the plane there were thethree of us, the two officers, a doctor, one official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
and someone from the Consulate.
Three hours to Dubai. We didn’t see any reporters in the airport but once we got to thehospital, we were astonished to see the media waiting in full force. There were some
reporters I knew, but the most striking thing was their sheer numbers. "This has reallyblown up," I felt.
In the hospital I was reunited with my big brother. "What a relief," he said, shaking myhand.
"Everybody's pretty stirred up back in Japan. When you get back, no matter what, justbe sure to apologize."
I felt lost as to what to do. This is when I first learned what it was to be subjected tobacklash. What was the crime that the three of us had committed?

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Imai: Why I Went to Iraq

106

Return to Japan
1 The starred sentences are taken verbatim from an interview with Carol

Picou. See here (accessed 28 November 2007). Picou ends her 1996 statement thus: "Cometogether and fight for your sons, daughters, your mothers and fathers, for the people overthere now, and for the people of Iraq that are suffering from the contaminants left behindin their land." [Tr.]Translated by Scott Mehl, with the kind permission of the author and publisher.
PART 2 Appeal on Behalf of the Hostages to the Sara Al Mujahedeen
April 9, 2004
By the name of God
Brothers of Saraya Al Mujahedeen
Al Salam Alaikum
God blesses you for what is good for our nation, our prayer for God to remove this grieffrom our country.
We wish that you would receive this letter. God knows that it is honest letter, this letter
is for God satisfaction and to inform you, what you don't know about your Japanese lady
prisoner Nahoko. She is, as we saw that in Al Jazera station, one of the three Japaneseprisoners.
We don't have any doubt that she and the other two Japanese will have gratifying carefrom you. Because our religion order that. And that is what we learned from our great
grandfathers.
We are not writing this letter to evaluate what you have done, or what you planning to
do. And also we are not writing this letter because we are supporter for coming of

Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

Japanese army either they are normal army or they are protect army to participate inrehabilitation of Iraq as Japanese Government is saying.
The only purpose of this letter and the photos attached is to let you know that Nahoko
is last person which should be taken as a hostage, in case you must take hostages. This
Japanese lady was very desirous from May 2003 to be in Baghdad voluntary andpersonally. And from that date she is spending her personal money to feed, clothe andtreat the homeless Iraqi children. Till she spend all money she was saved for herself along the years. In the last time she traveled to Japan her planning was to work for one
and half month to make some money and to come back to Iraq to spend it for Iraqi
homeless children. But she made heavy operation, therefore she couldn't save enoughmoney able her to bring gifts for the children, whom they are still waiting for their
Japanese mother Nahoko. You took her as a hostage in the same day that so many
people were waiting for her in Baghdad.
Brothers of Saraya Al Mujahedeen, in behalf of our self and many Iraqi orphan children,
we entreat you to release the three Japanese hostages, specially Nahoko as she is wascontent with only bread to feed her self, while she was buying palatable food for our
kids. She is good example for the love of Japanese people for Iraqi people.
If God wishes and you released those three Japanese you will give Japanese people goodchance to do what we and you want. Japanese people were always in the friend's side, in
the Iraqi causes. While many of our brothers in religion and nation were watching only.
The imperative is for God
AL Salam Alaikum
Group of active Iraqi in orphan's field
9/4/2004

Koriyama at time of release107Imai: Why I Went to Iraq

PART 3 Grandmother's Story (Hanada Chizue)
It was after 3 p.m. on April 20th when Noriaki came home. I greeted him quite
calmly. That was because just at that time, Mr. Yasuda and Mr. Watanabe1 were still
being held captive, and knowing that there were families suffering just what we had
been through, I did not feel it was right to rejoice extravagantly.
"I'm so glad, welcome home."
Since he came home safe and sound, I have nothing more to ask for.
When he was taken hostage, it was hard for me to comprehend what was actually goingon. I did wish, from the bottom of my heart, that I could offer myself as a substitute. I
couldn't truly believe that "Noriaki was home" until some time had passed after his
return, and we had settled back into our usual life.
Before he headed out for Iraq, there were times when Noriaki, faced with family
opposition, would just cry and cry. In the end, when his mother (Naoko) agreed, theothers felt there was nothing more to be done. I was not opposed myself.
The night before he left, I rubbed my sobbing grandson's body. Overcome by anxiety,regret, and self-recrimination, he didn't know what to do with himself any more. I held
his hand and said to him, "Come back alive. It's important for you to believe that nomatter what, you won't give up on life."
And I sent him off with a smile.
We try not to let Noriaki see the TV coverage of the backlash. Why did things turn out
like this?

Imai and his grandmother, Hanada Chizue September 2005

108

Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
1 Yasuda Junpei, free-lance journalist, and Watanabe Nobutaka, a human-rights activist,

were also safely released.

(Interview by Koshida Kiyokazu)
from Imai Noriaki, Why I Went to Iraq, p. 102.
Translated by Norma Field
Part 4 Dialogue with My Critics
FLAMING (I): Dialogue with my critics
Having been kidnapped in Iraq in April 2004, Imai Noriaki returned home to Japan only
to find countless letters and emails criticizing and slandering him. Two years after theincident, Mr. Imai decided to engage in face-to-face dialogue with his critics ....
[Staff, Nature and Humanity]

Hate mail"Getting back to my subject, I need you to pay me 20,000 [yen]. You can fork it overfrom the sales or royalties of your book. Having caused all that trouble, Mr. Imai, youreally ought to take responsibility for it. I work for X newspaper company. It's ok if you
confirm this with X newspaper company first. Just because you guys went [to Iraq] even109Imai: Why I Went to Iraq

though there was a travel ban, why should I have to go to work on holidays? Try
answering that one if you can. You owe me one. I need your phone number.
"You know, I'd managed to forget all about it, so why d'ya have to dig it up again?
You've gotta be an idiot. Even celebrities get abusive comments thrown at them ( "die "[shine], "gross "[kimoi]) on the net. Come to Tokyo and fork over some money. I'll let
you off with 20,000 [just under $200]. "Around 6 p.m. on February 8, when it was reported on a Yahoo website that I had
released the abusive emails and letters sent to me during the hostage incident, the site
was immediately swamped. In releasing these emails and letters, I intended to show theviolence of anonymous verbal abuse. My weblog, which Yahoo had linked on theirwebsite, received approximately 200,000 hits within the space of three days. The sheer
number of hits made it difficult to view the website with the letters. Moreover, 6,000
comments, filled with criticism and slurs, came in like a tsunami.
Within the space of three days, more than 250 messages were sent to the email address
I had made public, and at the end there were up to 400. The excerpts above are fromone of those emails.
In response to such criticism, I made my mobile number public and sought to engage indialogue with my critics. As a result, I was able to speak with 13 people who called in.
Some of them were clearly angry when they called; nevertheless, they were all people
with whom I could engage in reasonable discussion. Some even gave me useful advice.
In contrast to the telephone conversations, there seem to be many people among thoseposting to the weblog who feel free to write abusively, and some of the people I talked
with criticized such online comments by saying that "a lot of people are just baitingyou."
Comments on the blog
Here are some of the comments that were posted on the weblog.
"You mention having some sort of communication, dialogue or interaction with thepeople who sent in critical letters and emails with their real names attached. I think thisis something a person can't do unless he's prepared to listen to others. I think you
resigned yourself to accepting the criticism. That's not easy to do. This time, if you had
released those exchanges instead of the anonymous letters, I think you would havegotten your message across better.""I agree! I agree! ""Use your head, asshole. "The first comment is a reasonable response to the idea of publishing my exchanges withcritics on the blog. However, the comments to that comment are obviously intended tomake a butt of my "failure.""The kid's blog name is ‘Underpants'
It’s all ‘Underpants,’ body and soul

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111

You think I'm a guy who owns a ramen shop that went broke or something
You gotta be kidding
Don't go lining up, you bastardThis is a lousy shop.""Might as well just turn you into ‘underpants,’ Imai ""’Underpants’ = Imai, done! ""You a fool?
You think that Underpants is going to use
a crappy, noob [newbie] word like flame?
You better start studying, asshole "From about this point on, the user name "Underpants " appeared almost every day, andit was sometimes used to refer to me. False posts, with people using my name, werealso frequent. The following is one such example.
"472. Posted by Imai Noriaki 02/10/2006 15:12
I’m on my computer at last.
I apologize for this belated response.
I see there're people posting comments like "die" and "get lost" again.
I have said this many times before, but please stop doing this sort of thing.
It's pointless.
My patience is running out, and I'm going to get angry "I hardly ever post a comment myself. If I do, it's under the user name "Nori." I have notposted throughout the current incident, but there are multiple posts on the weblog
under the name "Imai Noriaki." Why is this happening?
There have been many posts that show no intention of starting a discussion or engaging
in reasonable criticism but rather take pleasure in the conflict itself. Still, from the
beginning, about 40% of the posts were written from a serious standpoint, and the
majority of the posts in the latter half could be described in this way.
Sociologists sometimes describe online bashing as "festivals" [matsuri]. Even in my case,there were many occasions in which people seemed to be taking recreational pleasurein the attacks. Here, I would like to write about the people who seemed to be enjoying
the criticism or slander that was common in the early to middle stages of this incident.
Meeting my critics
How is it that people can enjoy slandering someone and participating in this sort ofganging up?

Imai: Why I Went to Iraq

Since half a year ago, I have been trying to get in touch with people who sent in criticalor abusive letters and emails. I have taken a look at the letters one by one, and replied
to those that had a return address and a name. During the hostage incident, 104 lettersarrived; less than 10 percent came with a name and a return address, and of these, only
3 addresses turned out to be real. I wonder what sort of people all the other anonymous
writers are. How could they use such words as "shine " and "kimoi "? As a human being,
I was genuinely curious about this.
Before seeking out the anonymous, why not try to meet those with a "face," I thought,
and began to contact those who had been willing to identify themselves.
Takeda Yukio (alias) is a 50-year-old white-collar worker from the suburbs of Sapporo.
A reporter from the Hokkaido Shimbun had introduced me to him, saying that this man
had written a letter to the editor asserting the applicability of the "personal
responsibility" argument to the hostage incident.2"I never thought I would really get a chance to meet you, Mr. Imai. " Mr. Takeda took a
sip of beer, smiling.
"I read a little of your blog. I thought those letters were horrible, really horrible. " Heseemed to be expressing a little sympathy toward me. It seems that he became aware of
my blog after reading the email I had sent him.
"It wasn't so much that I was critical of the incident itself; it was the argument of themedia that got to me. ‘They were kidnapped because the government sent the SelfDefense Forces there. Since that is the government’s responsibility, the Self-Defense
Forces should be withdrawn’ was a line of reasoning I couldn't agree with. So I wrote a
letter to the editor for the first time in my life.""It might be strange to say this right in front of you, but when a Japan Airlines flight washijacked in 1977, Prime Minister Fukuda said that ‘the weight of a single human life isgreater than that of the earth.’ Surely human lives are important, but I think accepting
terrorists’ demands like that could lead to more lives lost in the future. So, I think we
had no choice but to not pull the troops at that point. "I nod over a sip of beer. Despite this, Mr. Takeda says, he was worried about us. If yourfamily had been cool and collected, they would have been criticized for that, too, Mr.
Takeda says slowly, as if choosing his words. The waitress had brought us some pasta,
and we began to eat. Mr. Takeda ate a mouthful of pasta, before continuing.
"At that time, many Japanese people were truly worried for you. Although I didn’t know
where you came from, I was worried. I thought some boys and and a girl from middleclass homes must have gone to Iraq. "I asked him why he thinks we were criticized so much.
"I think it comes from the ‘toasting’ scene shown right after your release. We werethinking ‘they must have been hurt, not eaten anything. They must have had a hardtime,’ but you all seemed much better than expected, and there was Ms. Takato saying,112

Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

113

‘I’d like to go back to Iraq again.’ Obviously, this was infuriating to everybody who wasworried for you. "However, Mr. Takeda began, there had been a gradual shift in his opinions about us. He
looked away, and then turned back to my eyes.
"After the incident, I heard news reports about why you and Ms. Takato went to Iraq, so
I started to understand something. I have an 18-year-old daughter who hasn’t gone toschool for more than two years, a school-refuser, so-called. She’s doesn't show interest
in anything. If she goes on like this, she’s going to be a NEET [Not in Education,
Employment, or Training]."
But, Mr. Takeda said, still looking in my eyes:"Today, many youngsters like my daughter are said to be NEETs. If our society is goingto crush young people pursuing a goal, its future can only be bleak. I'm worried that thismight spell the end of Japanese society. "Kurokawa Mitsuo (alias), 25 years old. He is the man who sent me the email at the
beginning of this article. As mentioned in the email, he is a newspaper delivery man.
After Mr. Kurokawa sent me the email, I gave him my number, to which he responded
by calling.
"Why are you bringing up that incident again? Why do you want to rehash something
that's over and done with? "These were his first words when he called me. He sounded more irritated than angry.
"I haven’t sorted it all out, but I don’t understand why you do things like this. I had towork holidays thanks to three people whose faces or names I didn't know. I still haven’t
been paid for the extra work. Are you an idiot? You ought to give me that money. "This made me irritated too, but I asked him why he was turning his anger on me.
Mr. Kurokawa is a student on scholarship funded by the newspaper distributor, so hegoes to college while working as a delivery man. The company is facing financial
difficulties, which means he does not get extra pay for overtime. If he were to quit thejob, he could no longer pay tuition. His parents will not pay it either, he says.
"Mr. Imai, of course everyone has something like their basic human rights, so you cando whatever you want, but I would like a little consideration for other people too. Yes, I
was furious back then. Why was I having to go to work because of people like them, I
thought. I would like you to understand that." The anger was gone from his voice as heuttered these words.
"I don't care about taxes or anything like that. I might even have gone over-the-top in
demanding payment."
Our phone conversation ended. While I was pondering what Mr. Kurokawa had just said,
he called me again.

Imai: Why I Went to Iraq

"I’m sorry about what I just said. Um, I hesitated a lot before calling. A lot of things havebeen sent to you anonymously, but there's something wrong with that, isn't there.
There're people who're saying things like "stupid" and "die," stuff that really goesagainst social morals, but they must feel like it wouldn't be cool to have their identities
exposed."Comments that can't be considered "criticism ""I had a look at the blog with the letters of criticism. When I first became aware of theblog, I trembled with rage. ‘A lot of taxpayer blood money was used to help these people
come home, but they didn't seem penitent at all!’ When I read the letters, I wanted toapplaud the writers."
This is an email sent by Tanaka Rieko (alias). I replied by giving her my number, and I
was able to talk to her on the phone. Her soft-spoken manner, belied the impression I
got from her email. I was surprised.
Ms. Tanaka remarks that she is especially unhappy with the way tax money was used.
"When I read the blog, I thought, what on earth is this guy doing? Why is he releasing
this? The criticism is totally appropriate. He's just playing the victim. "She says, however, she thought some of the posts to the weblog were truly awful.
"I think I can tell the people who are truly angry from those who are just having fun. "In fact, there were many serious comments, but there were also many abusive
comments like "die," "stupid," "croak, " and "gross. ""736. Posted by –no 02/09/2006 03:20
You think 'go and die' is a piece of abuse?
I think it's a piece of advice. "Can we call posts like this "criticism "? Why do they use words you could not say tosomeone’s face, or, if I quote one of the people I spoke to on the phone, words that "aresocially unacceptable, that cannot be used in human relationships?"
1 This post reflects the style of "2-Channel" (nichanneru) discourse. 2-Channel is said tobe the largest internet forum in Japan and possibly the world.

2 "Personal responsibility" is the translation for jiko-sekinin, a neologism that gained

instant popularity during the hostage crisis. The hostages had chosen to go on their own
responsibility and accordingly were owed nothing by the state. Such reasoning has
proven to be broadly useful in the era of neo-liberal privatization.
***
Shizen to Ningen [Nature and Humanity] 4, April 2006, Vol. 118 (17-20), translated by
Ayumu Tahara with the kind permission of the author and publisher. Footnotes by thetranslator. Part two of this article, published in the May issue, takes up other victims ofabusive treatment on the Internet.

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Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

PART 5 FROM THE DIARY OF IMAI NORIAKI
September 24, 2006
The things that won't disappear
Now that two weeks have passed since 9/11, here are some things I've been thinking
about.
These days, I can’t seem to remember what I did during high school. Actually, it's notjust these days. I think it started a little after the incident. Of the things that happened tome 2½ years ago and leading up to that time, I don't have very distinct memories. I
don’t even understand why. If someone told me to recount what's happened in the past
2½ years, I probably could, even in detail. Before that, my mind goes blank. Of course, I
can't recall what I was doing on 9/11. The only thing that remains in my mind is the factthat I was against the bombing of Afghanistan.
Ever since the hostage incident and my time in England, I think I’ve been consciously
trying to run away from the things I experienced in Iraq and Japan. Especially when it
comes to Iraq, or news about Iraq, I'll watch, but I never take the next step of thinking
about it. Stop, stop right now, you don't have the right to think about this any more: thisis the shouting I heard inside me for quite a while. I even tried to avoid thinking about
my project of working toward the abolition of depleted uranium shells. Maybe I'd begun
to feel that I wasn't supposed to think about it.
But I think I’ve really settled down since I got into college. The two years before then,doing odd jobs and what not, I was living a pretty unstable life without clear
direction. Since coming to Beppu, I've been lucky in my friends and environment. How
should I say this, I feel like I’m recovering myself bit by bit. Of course, I don’t go out of
my way to remember things from the past, but I can feel myself coming back, I think.
And now, I'm thinking about Iraq. What's going on over there, anyway? What CNN, ABC,and the BBC had to say yesterday was about how tragic the bombingof Sadr City in Baghdad was. They say that many women and children trying to buy
kerosene right before Ramadan were victims of this bombing. Seeing that this sort ofthing is a daily occurrence all over the country, anyone can understand that things havegotten much worse since the Iraq War began in 2003. According to a UN report, just in
July and August, there were more than 6000 Iraqi deaths. Since it's hard to grasp thesituation, I'm not even sure it should be called a civil war, but just think of how many
people have died. According to an article I saw two days ago in the British Independent,
many of those people were lost to our world as a result of different types of
torture. Electric current passed through the body, eyes gouged, and lastly, a bullet to thehead--I think the article went on like this. Seeking safety, many people head forneighboring countries such as Syria andJordan. They analyze the situation as "There're
no jobs, but it’s not as bad here." And in Japan, if you want to grasp even a little bit
about a country said to be "too dangerous for journalists to enter, so we don't know thedetails of what's going on" — well, ours is a country with no choice but to rely onjournalists working for foreign media. And here I am, not able to do anything about it.

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Imai: Why I Went to Iraq

America, the very party that started the Iraq War, is now writhing in agony. It's beenshown that the Saddam Hussein regime did not have the chemical weapons it was said
to have, and most of the grounds for war turn out to have been based on mistaken or
unreliable information, but America swiftly opted for war, signaling the end of
diplomacy. According to a U.S. Army report, 300 tons of depleted uranium have been
used, and as to what that will cause we have no clue. To be sure, the danger of depleted
uranium shells has never been proven, but even those connected with the military
involved in the development of these weapons, have said they "cannot deny theirdanger." What a contradiction then, to have the U.S. military saying, "It's completely
safe." Though at present the danger of this weapon has not been proven, does thatmean it's permissible for America not to put the brakes on its use and export, despite
the many people who question its safety? Indeed, it has been used in massive quantities
already, twice inIraq, and once in Kosovo. If the effect has been to contaminate theenvironment and all the human beings there, then I can only think that [for Americans],these are acts that will return to haunt them.
I'm going to stop here. I just want to start confronting the things that I had stopped
thinking about. If you ask what I can do without actually going to those sites, then theanswer is, only this.
[a tiny sampling of ] Comments
31) Posted by "A" 10/02/2006 20:35
It takes two-and-a-half years to face your own problems.
Humans are like that, aren't they.
Because they’ve never been to Iraq, because they were to no small degree shocked by
the war, and because they don’t want to change their way of thinking, there're people
who want to beat up on the signifier "Imai."
For no particular reason or meaning at all, because it’s easier to beat up on someone
else than to change yourself.
They’re just like you.
32) Posted by "Junichiro" 10/04/2006 8:16
Well it’s because Imai’s a loser.
Don’t you feel like kicking the shit out of him sometimes?
You get it, don't you. Even you.
37) Posted by "mu" 10/05/2006 23:25
I thought you hadn’t been on site recently.
So you're saying that even without going to the actual site, you can say what you want?
So you're saying that getting things through the media is enough?

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Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

Then what you did in the past was pointless after all.
39) Posted by "It’s just my personal opinion" 10/05/2006 23:28
I feel like what you're fussing about is just a little off.
You're weirdly focused on "depleted uranium shells." Why not be concerned about "allarms"?
You talk about "the danger/safety of depleted uranium shells," but guess what. All
weapons are basically dangerous.
66) Posted by "tns" 10/20/2006 02:49
A carefree student, huh? You lucky son of a bitch, eh?
Your book been selling well? Do something with that money so I can have anotherlaugh. How about infiltrating the North?
67) Posted by "Norisuke" 10/20/2006 08:20
You want me to infiltrate North Korea and make a picture book showing the poverty ofordinary citizens and show it to those bastards who talk about economic sanctions andall that nonsense?
There'll be 100,000 deaths from starvation.
Damn murderers!
68) Posted by X 10/20/2006 10:59
How d'ya get to the North? D'ya hafta go through Russia?
69) Posted by Norisuke 10/20/2006 12:26
From Pyongyang by land.
You go through dangerous territory by choice.
That country's got a weakness for money, too, so they'll do anything for you.
(See here, accessed 20 December 2007)
February 17, 2007
Looking at the present, the past, and the future
I was finally able to get some sleep last night. Up until yesterday the week was insane. I
had to work 9 hours a day, then do all kinds of things related to BEPPoo!!1 Even though
it’s a lot of work, I feel like we’re able to give it our all because there's the pleasure offeeling like we're somehow able to create our own media. Bit by bit, I hope that ourlittle group can do things that link up with the revitalization of the town of Beppu.
Changing the subject--I got a letter the other day from somebody I know who's ahairdresser. She's turning 30 this year, and she tells me she'll be quitting her job. The
reason is that her health isn't great. I used to talk to her a lot, and she'd told me that117Imai: Why I Went to Iraq

she'd almost died once, and that she had a chronic illness that didn’t seem to getbetter. And now, all of a sudden, this decision to quit her job.
In spite of it all, she says she's going back to her hometown in eastern Hokkaido to open
up her own shop. I can't begin to grasp how hard it would be to quit your job at the ageof 30 and then open your own shop, but I think it's got to be something that takes a lotof courage. I felt that as a person with a chronic disease, she was extending a powerful"challenge."
I'll turn 22 this year. Ordinary college students on track would be graduating thisyear. But I have many friends around me who came in last year as new first-year college
students, ranging in age from 21 to 25. Most had jobs before coming to college; others
had part-time jobs and all kinds of experience before coming to APU [Ritsumeikan AsiaPacific University]. I had a hard time during the two years after graduating from highschool, doing part-time jobs and so much else, but I finally matriculated lastyear. People come here for all sorts of reasons, but among them are some who comebecause they want to become people who can be of use to society and the world.
I want to become someone who's useful in all kinds of situations. I'd still like to do thekind of work I used to do with an NGO.That's because even if violence between people isinevitable, I want to contribute to decreasing the ultimate violence of war and armed
conflict. If I look at what NGOs are doing, though, I can see that they aren't able toprevent war or armed conflict but rather, they're just dealing with things after thefact. Sure, it's necessary to have all kinds of people go out into the world and help othersin need. But we don't seem to be able to control the violence of killing that occurs
beforehand. To the question, what are we supposed to do, then, there's no answer. The
fact of the matter is I end up feeling powerless before the contradictions inside me.
But you know what? Even if my current life leads to my joining a firm or company, I
want to continue doing what I believe in, even if little by little. The power of one person
amounts, in the end, to something like dust. Yet, as the saying goes, "When even dust
accumulates, it forms a mountain," I want to do even a little bit toward putting an end to
extreme violence. Different people having different opinions is a given, but thatshouldn't lead to killing each other. This is what I've believed in ever since highschool. It's because I still think about that that I'm doing BEPPoo!! here with my friends.
If you look at BEPPoo!! from outside, it is admittedly still incomplete as a media
form. Even so, in just one year, our staff of 7, 8 very busy people managed to accomplish
something. I want to quit my part-time job by this summer and concentrate on this.
Although Beppu is a small town of 120,000, it has the highest ratio of foreigners toJapanese after Tokyo, and I think the place has its own appeal. I'd like to make this aspace for launching all sorts of things. I also believe that the experience of creating sucha space will surely be useful later on. That's why I want to focus on this right now.
It's hard to see into the future, and for this very reason I don't want to avert my eyes.
There are a lot of uncertainties, but nothing will get started if we stop to list all ourcomplaints and dissatisfactions. What we can do before we start with our complaints

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and dissatisfactions is to look at ourselves. Something will surely get started from
that. Let’s not give up, while we look at the present and the past, and the future.
Comments
1) Posted by "Kataoka Kazuyoshi/Sukichi" 02/17/2007 21:53
Jesus is your true friend, who will help you in times of trouble. I went to Aeon Miyazaki
Central Movies and watched Dream Girls.
Everybody, let’s go look for a dream, let's look at the thing that only you possess, thething that the Lord has given only to you.
It is something buried inside you like a diamond, if you were to find it, whether it be bigor small, however small it is, let's believe in it. Let’s protect this diamond,*Patience, yeah, patience, yeah, patience, patience shall take you to where you’ll besurrounded by so many people who praise you, yeah.* [Text between asterisks in
English in the original.]
The seed of the sidewalk, the bird pecks at
The seed of the rocky land withers in sunlight
The seed of the thorns is crushed and sealed
The seed of the cultivated fertile lands, multiplies a hundred-fold2) Posted by "kkkyyy" 02/18/2007 00:55
Please don’t give up and good luck.
Your trying to revive a countrified town like Beppu is Nice!!
4) Posted by "Haruhi" 02/18/2007 11:17
Get a life
Playtime is important
1 A portal website for the citizens of Beppu, Oita Prefecture, started up and maintained by

Imai and a small group of fellow students.(See here, accessed 20 December 2007)
Translated by Ariya.
December 16, 2007
Even though my hand's shaking... For the past 3 years and more, I've been watching my friends go where they want, do
what they want. Every time I hear their stories, I think, "Wow—that's incredible. I
couldn't do that, though." But I've decided to try to be more honest with myself.
That's because I really do want to go out into the world and see and learn a lot ofthings. I want to have the experiences you can only get while you're in college. And I
want to turn them into something that'll be useful for other people in the

119Imai: Why I Went to Iraq

future. Without noticing it, I'd given up on that kind of hope, but after all, if I don't move
forward, I won't know what I'm living for. After all, I survived, so I've got to move
forward. This life was given to me, it's a life that was saved for me by others.
For over 3 years now, I've been restricting my freedom of action. I've tried to go only tosafe places, to places where I could have fun.But in the end, I have a feeling I wasavoiding looking at the big problems facing society. True, I've paid attention to what's
going on, I've participated in stuff like elections and whatever concerns Japan. But I
haven't been involving myself with things going on in the world.
Right now, I want to follow up on Muslim people. I want to learn what kind of people
the believers of Islam are. There's a ton of stuff I want to know. I can't go on shrinking
back. I have to admit that it's scary to go overseas. Just thinking about it makes my hand
shake uncontrollably. But if I don't take action, I won't change and the world around me
won't change.
Tomorrow's a training session for [incoming members of] BEPPoo!! It's going to bebusy but I'm going to do my best and enjoy myself.
(See here, accessed 20 December 2007)
Translated by Norma Field***
Scott Mehl is a graduate student of Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago.
Ayumu Tahara and Ariya are students in the College of the University of Chicago. Norma
Field teaches in the Department of East Asian Languages & Civilizations oftheUniversity of Chicago. She thanks the Committee of Japanese Studies at the University
for support of this project, Aiko Kojima for research assistance, and most especially,
Lauren Sethney.

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121

Analysts in both Japan and the U.S. criticized Japan’s social insularism for this public
shaming, and most of the commentators were asserting that this behavior was unique toJapan. Marie Thorsten, in “The Homecoming of Japanese Hostages in Iraq:
Culturalism or Japan in America's Embrace” takes on the claim that this kind of ordeal
could happen “only” in conformist Japan and not in the more supposedly citizen-centered,individualistic West. Once again the Japanese government chose a strategy that helped its
diplomatic goals but silenced democratic expression at home. By not succumbing to thecaptors’ demands, and by quelling domestic oppositional voices, Japan’s leaders’ handlingof the hostage-taking incident and its aftermath proved to American leaders that it indeed
was loyal to the U.S.-Japan alliance and “coalition of the willing.” Meanwhile, the former
hostages were attacked for making their leaders’ task harder. Of course, in the early post9/11 years, Americans who criticized the war were also attacked for making anti-Bushstatements, especially if they did so in a foreign country—exactly what Japan’s own antiwar
hostages in Iraq had done.
The Homecoming of Japanese Hostages from Iraq: Culturalism or Japan in America’s
Embrace?
Marie Thorsten
May 25, 2009http://apjjf.org/-Marie-Thorsten/3157/article.html
In the spring of 2004, five Japanese civilians doing volunteer aid and media work in Iraq
were kidnapped, threatened and released unharmed by Iraqi militant groups in two
separate, overlapping incidents lasting just over one week. On their return to Japan (16April 2004), the hostages appeared defensively solemn, having been harshly criticized andshamed for their effrontery to travel to a government-declared danger zone and undertake
anti-war actions perceived as critical of both the Japanese and U.S. presence in Iraq. Morethan the abductions themselves, the inhospitable homecoming seized headlines around theworld and marked one of the most searing images in Japan’s controversial involvement in
the American-led war.
The first, more publicized, abduction was initially seen as a test of the commitment of Japanto support America, but within one week was transmogrified in Japanese media to public
shaming of the victims. The five were compelled to say they were “sorry” for theirtransgression and were pressured to pay back some of their repatriation expenses to thestate. In the story’s moral ending, they should have been acting with “self-responsibility”(jiko sekinin).
In 2004, still at the height of faith in global market fundamentalism, critics often spokeof “self-responsibility” pejoratively to question the pervasive rationale that individuals,
more than governments, must rise to the challenges of economic uncertainty. In othercircumstances this would be sensible, but “self-responsibility” in quotation marks
negatively insinuates that governments are preoccupied with profits obtained in global
markets, and have abandoned responsibility toward their own (unwealthy) citizens.
Japan’s leaders seized the hostage homecoming to rearticulate jiko sekinin back into theThorsten: The Homecoming of Japanese Hostages in Iraq

122

embrace of cultural nationalism, but for critics of excessive governmental power, the term
still retained its negative connotation.
Neoliberalism, also called market fundamentalism, conceptualizes winners and losers
according to the laws of the marketplace. But it can also provide opportunities forindividuals to take their interests, skills and citizenship outside their borders—which isexactly what the five persons did by asserting their freedom to work in Iraq independent of
the government. But amid war, which heightens loyalties and exclusions, the individuals
were redefined as subjects of a nation, even though the state, and many of their fellow
citizens, did not reciprocate responsibility toward them: the five were harassed andostracized, as if their citizenship was suspended.1 This is characteristic of neoliberal
regimes that actively produce “disposable others,” explains Takahashi Tetsuya, whoreminds us that “responsibility” entails a relationship toward others. Instead, orthodox
proponents of Japanese state policies were using the concept as “a rhetorical device todiscard whoever [is] in the weaker position at any given moment.” After the repatriation,
Takahashi adds, parents of the hostages were also charged with inadequate jiko sekinin,
personal responsibility, in a “feudal sort of joint [parent-child] liability.”2
Many critics of the inhospitable homecoming, in Japan and abroad, also drew essential linesof distinctiveness by shaming Japan’s own shaming, implying that this could happen only inprovincial Japan, not in cosmopolitan Europe or America. Japan is well known for isolating
non-conformists within its culture while simultaneously being isolated in the international
community. For Samuel Huntington, Japan is the “lonely state” that does not fit anywhere
else in his taxonomy of clashing civilizations.3
Seen only as a strategic assertion of a unitary culturalism to define the nation, the jikosekinin debacle distracted from recognition of the pressures other countries felt to be“responsible” to America to support the Iraq war. The last throes of support for the “withus or with the terrorists” binary logic in which the conflict began came to an end in thespring of 2004, the time of the two incidents. Within the same month of the Japanesehomecoming, the Abu Ghraib prison abuses were starkly exposed to the world, helping tounravel American claims of moral superiority that had gone unchallenged in thenationalistic atmosphere permeating the early phase of the “war on terror.”
Were the hostile homecoming incidents more about the “responsibility” of nonconformists
to Japan, or about the responsibility of Japan to America? In either case, the discourses
those questions generated, that of cultural distinctiveness or alliance unity, belied the many
gestures of cross-national community taking place throughout the ordeal, from capture torepatriation.
States of Exception, Alliances of Exceptionality
It would be easiest to explain the shaming of the hostages as the result of ancient traditions.
But cultures are mutable, and politics of spectacle are often unstable and unpredictable.4
Wars and political instability can invite arbitrary power, prompting the state itself to seizea kind of “self-responsibility” by unilaterally declaring that a “state of exception” exists.
Giorgio Agamben writes that the state of exception occurs with a legitimate “standstill of
the law,” when the rules and norms of a society are suspended but not eliminated; citizens
lose rights, but not their bodies, in the course of being reduced to “bare life.”5 Though an

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ancient concept, the state of exception became a dominant paradigm of the U.S. reaction to
9/11.6
In another era, de Tocqueville appraised self-exceptionalism as connected to America’s
origins as a democratic nation-state, and to its roots as an exemplar of Puritanical
Christianity.7 The application of self-exceptionalism to foreign policy became conspicuous
after the end of the Cold War, as the United States began to exempt itself from several
international agreements concerning land mines, nuclear test bans, global warming, humanrights, and the creation of an International Criminal Court.8 Particularly after America
invaded Iraq in March 2003--an act of aggression neither for self-defense, nor authorized
by the United Nations-- the question of American exceptionalism moved to the fore of
global debates.9
In Japan, the discourse on unique “Japaneseness” (nihonjinron) becomes especially active
during times of threat, such as during the Second World War and the economic “trade wars”
of the 1980s. Japan’s culturalism is also cultivated through the external gaze, through nonJapanese analysts such as Huntington who sustain the representation of Japan as a
resolutely peculiar nation.
Then-U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also attempted to define temporal
exceptionalism. In “extraordinary times,” such as World War II, the Cold War and 9/11, she
explained, “the very terrain of history shifts beneath our feet and decades of human effort
collapse into irrelevance.” Leaders must transform alliances to meet new purposes and“enduring values.”10 The defeated Japan of 1945 was also a special model for the current
U.S. occupation of Iraq, she wrote, recalling the favorite anecdote of President George W.
Bush: that his father was shot down by the Japanese as a young pilot in World War II, butlater proved as U.S. president that former war enemies can become friends.11
The two rhetorics of exceptionality meet in the discourse of the U.S.-Japan security alliance.
Huntington not only called Japan a “lonely state”12; he also wrote that America is a “lonely
superpower”13, but together the two lonely hearts constitute a pillar of global power.
America and Japan possess the world’s first- and fifth -largest defense budgets14, and thefirst-and third -largest economies.15 Since the 1980s, political and military leaders haveinstitutionalized the incantation of the special relationship between the two nations,frequently quoting Ronald Reagan’s declaration, “Together, there is nothing our two
countries cannot do,” or former Ambassador Mike Mansfield’s assertion that the twocountries represent “the most important bilateral relationship (in the world) - bar none.”16
The media invented affectionate variations, referring to the “Ron-Yasu relationship” (Prime
Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro and President Ronald Reagan) and the “George-Jun alliance”(Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro and President George W. Bush).
Koizumi, prime minister during the hostage incidents, is a self-described “die-hard proAmerican,” and an Elvis and Hollywood fan whose invitations to Bush’s Texas ranch also
served the American leader well. For reasons of history even more than the “personalchemistry between leaders,” according to The Weekly Standard, Bush considered Japan “aliving rebuke to critics of his pro-democracy strategy in the Middle East.”17

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The Iraq war, for many security officials in both Tokyo and Washington, provided thefortuitous opportunity for Japan to finally become a militarily “normal” nation, which also
opens the window for joint exceptionality. While the U.S. put aside international
conventions on warfare and the treatment of prisoners, Japan made exceptions to Article
Nine of its Constitution, which mandates that the nation “forever renounce war as asovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settlinginternational disputes.” Japan has also made apparent exceptions to its Self-Defense Forces
Law of 1954 which stipulates that ground, maritime and air forces (SDF) can maintainnational security only by defending the nation against direct and indirect aggression, and it
has made de facto exceptions to its “three non-nuclear principles” stating that the nation
will not possess, produce or admit into the country any nuclear weapons. Announced in
1967, the non-nuclear principles were adopted by the Japanese parliament in 1971 andearned former Prime Minister Sato Eisaku the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974. But the naval
base in Yokosuka now hosts the nuclear-powered carrier, the USS George Washington, an
arrangement openly validated by leaders of both nations as if there is no contradiction.18
After 9/11, American officials pressed Japan to “show the Rising Sun” in Afghanistan, to“put boots on the ground” in Iraq, to “quit paying to see the game, and get down to thebaseball diamond”.19 In 2003, public opposition to the dispatch of the SDF to Samawah,
Iraq, was around seventy to eighty percent, but by early 2004 a small majority was shownto favor dispatch after the troops had been sent.20 Japan’s eventual contribution of 600
troops to the American occupation of Iraq may have constituted a symbolic peg in the“coalition of the willing.” But Japan and Okinawa have long served as a linchpin of American
security efforts across Asia and the Pacific.

Anti-war protests in Tokyo on 9 April 2004 (source: AcTV)

The five Japanese taken hostage in Iraq were critical of the American-led invasion andJapan’s supporting role in the war. Their critics and harassers failed to see this as
democratic behavior consistent with their Japanese citizenry. Moreover, for their politicalstruggles independent of the Koizumi administration, their refusal to comply withrestrictions on movement, and their concern with conveying a “truth” of the Iraq situation

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via the Internet and other media, the five Japanese citizens also exhibited a sort ofdemocratic global citizenry as well. Failing to recognize the simultaneity of national
belongingness and transborder democratic action, pundits reduced the incident to hostage
shaming, led by key Japanese government officials reversing the charges of “responsibility”
first aimed at them, and Japan-shaming, with analysts in both Japan and the U.S. criticizing
Japan’s social insularism. Below is a review of these circumstances, focusing on the more
widely reported first abduction.
The Hostage-Taking
The most conspicuous victim, Takato Nahoko, then 34 and an independent aid worker, had
lived in Iraq previously and traveled back and forth from Japan primarily to fund a shelter
for street children; she also assisted hospitals and was well-known to many of the aid
workers in the area. Imai Noriaki, an aspiring journalist who was then only 18, traveled to
Iraq only a month after graduating from high school. He had hoped to collect material for abook about children exposed to depleted uranium to contribute to a local social movementin Japan. Koriyama Shoichiro, then 32, entered Iraq as a freelance photojournalist
determined to present an accurate account of Iraq otherwise unavailable to Japanesecitizens. Though it was originally not widely publicized and perhaps not known to his
captors, Koriyama was a former member of the SDF. The victims, and Takato in particular,
were outraged by the American-led invasion of Iraq and critical of claims that Japan’s SDF
activities, which were described by Japanese authorities as supporting the Iraqi people
insisting instead that they merely supported the American occupation.21 Takato was aformer aid worker in India; Koriyama had just traveled from Palestine.
One week after Takato, Imai and Koriyama were abducted (7 April 2004), two otherJapanese civilians, Watanabe Nobutaka, then 36, and Yasuda Jumpei, then 30, were taken
captive in a separate incident (14 April) and released within three days. Watanabe, like
Koriyama, was a former SDF member and at the time of the kidnapping a peace activist.
Yasuda was working as a freelance photographer and was making his fourth trip to Iraq.
Watanabe and Takato both had websites exposing conditions under the occupation, withsummaries of local opinions they heard in Iraq particularly regarding the deployment ofJapanese troops.22 Though the five civilians have been collectively characterized as
humanitarian or NGO workers, only Takato, Imai and Watanabe had ties to aid work ofvarying types and degrees, and the work of all five overlapped with their personal interests
in gathering and disseminating information about the Iraq War, particularly Japan’s role init and the impact on the Iraqi people.
The first group of three met at a hotel in Amman, Jordan, and agreed to take a taxi acrossthe Iraqi border. When they were abducted at a petrol station on the Jordanian-Iraqi
border in the early morning hours of 7 April, the humanitarians became typecast in theiridentities as Japanese nationals; the armed captors accused them of being spies for theJapanese government, and by implication the American government too.
The kidnapping of the Japanese, and soon, dozens of other international civilians by various
militia groups, portended a reversal of the purported imminent American victory. It
occurred just one week after the grisly murders, on 31 March 2004, of four American
contractors whose bodies were dragged through the streets of Fallujah, hung on a bridge

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and beaten. The kidnappings of Japanese, Korean and other civilians not part of the original
U.S.-UK-led assault on Baghdad furthered the perception that major hostilities, despite
Bush’s “mission accomplished” declaration, were increasing rather than declining.
Videotaped scenes of the captors holding guns and knives to the Japanese citizens' necks
and denouncing the invasion were shown widely across the world (and later featured in
Michael Moore’s documentary film, Fahrenheit 9/11). In the video, the captors claimed theywould execute the three civilians if Japan did not pull out its troops within three days.

Image from video showing hostages threatened with knives (AP photo)
The kidnapping tested the Japanese government’s resolve to defend its controversial
dispatch of the SDF to Iraq as a humanitarian mission, pitched not as direct support for the
U.S.-led occupation but as a broader gesture of support for the Iraqi people. During the firstdays of the crisis, many Japanese citizens demanded the pullout of the Self-Defense Forcesin order to get the three civilians released; they wanted, then, what the kidnappers wanted.
Family members of the victims made emotional pleas in several press conferences andcollected 150,000 signatures on a petition urging the government to withdraw the troops.23
Hundreds of civilians also protested the SDF deployment outside the prime minister’s
residence and in other areas around Tokyo.

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Family members submit petition to government (AP photo)

By the end of the ordeal, however, when the abductees were safely released, attention
turned to one aspect of this constitutionally pacifist nation. Japan’s government officials
charged that the trio had failed to exercise jiko sekinin, “self-responsibility,” by venturing
out to government-decreed dangerous places for no compelling reason. Family members
apologized to officials for “causing trouble” and having an “impolite attitude” toward thestate. Although safely released, the victims returned to Japan downcast and silenced, as if
criminals, issuing only statements of apology for the trouble and financial burden theycaused to tax-paying compatriots; they agreed to repay some of the expenses incurred.24
Some were plagued with threatening phone calls and other forms of harassment, instilling
depression and post-traumatic syndrome.
This shaming and silencing was not the only way the kidnapping victims were “broughthome” to their Japanese national identities. The statements below from internationalsources also relied on stereotypes to lend authority to their critiques.
The Los Angeles Times columnist Tom Plate wrote off the event as another round of “Asianvalues” that Westerners will never understand. According to Plate, the Japanese media had“downplayed” the story, in comparison to the “psychodrama” that would have unfolded had
it occurred in America (referring to the hostage-taking itself, not the homecoming). Platethen deployed the oldest East-West stereotypes,“That’s because the West nurtures a culture of individualism and entrepreneurism.
That’s especially evident in our aggressive journalism (heroic correspondents “getting thestory” against all danger) and in the rise of our civil-society nonprofits. In Japan, bycontrast, the news media tend to react more as a group (or not overreact as a group), andthe civil-society nonprofit sector is in relative infancy.
One reason for the difference between East and West is that the former’s culture still has
the capacity to reflect hierarchical values: In effect, father (the authority figure) knows best.

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And so when father is government, and the government strongly advises its people not to
go to Iraq, and people go anyhow, then it’s their fault and their problem.”25
New York Times Asia correspondent Norimitsu Onishi similarly drew attention to theJapanese peculiarity of o-kami, an anciently conditioned obeisance to god-like officials.26
Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a widely televised interview with Japan’s TBS
network, paternalistically advised,“The Japanese people should be very proud that they have citizens like this. . . and thesoldiers that you are sending to Iraq that they are willing to take that risk. . . But, even when,because of that, they get captured, it doesn’t mean we can say, “Well, you took the risk. It’s
your fault.” No, we still have an obligation to do everything we can to recover themsafely.”27
Such reports generally fell back on dichotomies between “Japan” as an exceptional, insularcountry and America and others as part of a more integrated and sophisticated global
society. Powell’s widely quoted statement and others like it overlooked the fact that the
hostages and their family members had made strongly political, anti-Bush, anti-SDFdeployment statements, which American aid workers, despite their generally greaternumbers and longer experience, were reluctant to publicize in the early phase of the war.
Bashing
Kobayashi Masahiro’s Bashing premiered at the Cannes International Film Festival in May
2005 and offered one of the most scathing criticisms of the incident.28 In the prosaicallyminimalist film, a young woman named Takai Yuko (Urabe Fusako) experiences derision,
hostility and ostracism in her unsociable, provincial seaside community. Crank calls to thefamily’s Spartan working-class apartment reveal that Yuko has been doing aid work in an
unnamed Middle Eastern country; the anonymous voices sneer at her selfishness, her
failure to act with self-responsibility and her lack of concern for her countrymen, all ofwhom are said to hate her. It does not take viewers long to realize that this is a “fictional”
portrayal of Takato Nahoko, who is also from Hokkaido (where the film is set).

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Kobayashi’s film Bashing (source: Cinebel)

Yuko’s physiognomy conveys the stages of depression with an honesty lacking in
Hollywood histrionics. At one point a solitary tear roosts defiantly on the tip of her nose,
creating a witchy elongation that might be satirizing her homecoming, or else, like theocean she frequently gazes into, pointing her in a direction elsewhere.
“Elsewhere” is the only refuge in the film—either the temporal “elsewhere” of thestepmother who urges a “this too shall pass” waiting period, or the geographic “elsewhere”
Yuko has just returned from. When her last tie to her hometown has been lost, she makes aflight reservation to leave Japan forever.
The loneliness the viewer experiences is not just empathy with Yuko’s suffering from thebashing, but also the total lack of connective space between the protagonist and others.
Yuko’s provincial world evokes Agamben’s “bare life” and is far more desolately conformist
than that of Takato Nahoko, who experienced bashing but also enjoyed support, mobility
and communication denied to Yuko. Even Yuko’s computer has frozen and she has thrown
the telephone out the window. In his “Director’s Notes,” Kobayashi states that the “fiction”
he presents could be about Takato, or it could be universal, a story that involves you andme. And yet try as it may, Bashing failed somehow to transcend its reference to theexperiences of Takato and the other abductees in 2004.
After its premiere in Cannes, Kobayashi remarked that the foreign reporters were very
interested in knowing how to separate the real situation in Japan from the director’s
fictionalization. They also wanted to know why such a thing could happen in Japan, and hereplied that he did not have a good answer.

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Though the cultural self-caricature is intended to be critical, Kobayashi has recreated thesame assumptions of nihonjinron in its worst form of a pure cultural self: monolithic,unchanging, prone to blindly following the slogans of the leader and, indeed, frozen in timeand physical geography as “sakoku,” Japan’s isolation policy during the feudal era. “Do you
think Japan has changed in the year and a half since the kidnapping of Takato and theothers?” I asked him, during his presentation following the film’s showing at Doshisha
University in the fall of 2005. He responded that the tendency toward bashing noted in thefilm has since transformed into apathy, and the most likely response of Japanese to his
film’s message would be to ignore it. Then he added, most likely in obligatory response to
my very gaijin appearance in the audience, that Japan, after all, is a mura shakai (village
society), tsumaranai (insignificant) and it will not change (Nihon wa kawaranai).
It has always been disconcerting that such utterances of Japaneseness from Japanese seemto echo the very statements used by Americans during the Pacific War to create racial
otherness. American propaganda of that era used such egregiously racist stereotyping as,“A Jap is a Jap is a Jap” (writings of General John DeWitt)29, or Frank Capra’s infamous
saying in his 1945 documentary, Know Your Enemy: Japan, that the Japanese were like“photographic prints off the same negative.”30 Dower has called such a tendency “collusive
Orientalism”: Japanese invoke their own stereotyping because in doing so they
simultaneously promote the myth of uniqueness or national unity.31 There is still a fine line
between portraying the myth of fatalistic uniqueness because one firmly believes in it, andportraying the myth to censure it while still feeling that it will never change. (In fact,
Kobayashi was also bashed for making the film as it circulated in Japan.)
Beyond Culturalism
Of course, there was a Japaneseness about this ordeal as the hostages were made toapologize, bow deeply and reflect on the troubles they caused. The homecoming spectacledrew attention to the ostracism of Japan’s own citizens being treated as excluded outsiders
despite having carried out international aid, research and reportage in a danger zone. But
conflict within supposedly conformist Japan ensued. And the nuances in this event, beyond
those observed in the distinction between the cultural twain of East and West that shallnever meet, are more compelling when thinking about how wars generate moral panic inmany societies. One can find instability beyond the unifying codes of nation-states in thefollowing examples.
The “graphic” videotape: The first global exposure of the three hostages was through thevideotape delivered to Al-Jazeera and the Associated Press Television News. Against abackground of bullet holes, the blindfolded, kneeling trio were fuzzily seen vocalizing theirterror while masked men hold guns and knives to their necks. The captors identify
themselves as the Saraya al-Mujahideen and issue the statement, “We tell you that three ofyour children have fallen prisoner in our hands and we give you two options—withdraw
your forces from our country and go home or we will burn them alive and feed them to thefighters.”32 By now this kind of hostage-taking video has become all too familiar in the Iraq
conflict; this particular video, however, stands out for its dramatic elements. It was often
described in the press as “graphic,” and it made this case the most conspicuous of the wave
of abductions that occurred around the same time in Iraq (including seven South Koreans,
one Briton, one Canadian, two Israelis and, a few days later, two more Japanese taken byJapan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

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different brigades).33 What is conveyed in such a message is that the three citizens havebecome unwitting representatives of the Japanese state, and the Japanese state—even for
all its rhetorical gestures to identify itself in a humanitarian capacity and not as an official
member of the “coalition of the willing”—becomes just that, an aid to the American
invasion and occupation.
In reverse, the implication that the captors likewise represented a unified Iraq, was alsopresent—but belied by the fact that, at the time at least, the various abducting groups werelikely to be disparate. The Japanese trio revealed after their release the extent to which
their own captors were divided. What made their situation unnerving was not just thatthey were held captive, and believed they would lose their lives, but also that they were
held in several different places, and were passed from captor to captor and given very
different receptions. At times they were bound and bullied and treated with hostility,
suspicion and threats. At other times they were shown family photos, served home-cooked
meals, apologized to, and politely bid farewell.
As revealed in Takato Nahoko’s memoir of the captivity, one faction of kidnappers spentsome time accusing them of being spies. Having the most experience in Iraq, Takato
passionately defended her humanitarian work to help transport medical supplies andprovide shelter for homeless children. She provided names of Iraqis who could verify her
identity and character. The captors then left and returned with tobacco and food. Yet just as
the conversation was turning to the tastiness of noodles and vegetables, someone came inwith a hand-held video camera. The interpreter turned to the trio and repeated several
times (quoting from Takato’s recollection): “Your life will be guaranteed. But in return, thisis bad but, would you please cry for us?”34

Takato’s memoir (source: Amazon.jp)

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The three were then blindfolded and forced to kneel down on a floor. The 18-year-old Imai
was apparently kicked several times, and was urged to cry out his pain (“it-te-e” in roughJapanese) while all three captives and their captors chanted, “No Koizumi,” and knives
were held to the victims” throats. The blindfolds were removed and the interpreter asked
again, “This is bad, but would you cry for us now?” One captor moved his sword toward
Imai and the captors shouted in English, “Cry, cry!” – moving at least Takato to actual tears.
Koriyama (the journalist) asked if she was all right; then the interpreter also told her she
could stop crying. Finally the captors themselves said in English, “Sorry, sorry,” and one
leaned over and kissed her on the head, reminding her of the rambunctious street children
she worked with.35 (The gist of this account was confirmed in press conferences with theother two victims.)
After their video performance, the captives were again blindfolded, put in a car and moved
around again several times until their release. According to Takato’s memoir, it may havebeen the bombing around the area (especially Fallujah) putting them in danger, as well as
disagreement among captors over their fate, that caused the peregrinations. In any case,none of the victims had any idea that the video with the contrived emotions was attached
to a statement issuing their death threats and urging the pullout of the SDF.
After their release through intervention by the Islamic Clerics Association, Japan’s Asahi
Shimbun editorialized, “In Iraqi society as a whole, the armed bands that snatch foreigners
are but a tiny minority. We feel, however, that one of the factors contributing to thehostage-takings is the tacit approval that many give such acts amid growing anti-American
sentiment. What really worries us is that such Iraqis have started to think the SDF came to
Iraq to cooperate in the U.S. military’s occupation.”36

Takato and Imai on Al Jazeera after their release (AP photo)

Bureaucrats and blogs: Immediately following the news of the abduction, Foreign Minister
Kawaguchi Yoriko issued her own video statement to the abductors in which she confirmed
the innocence of the three citizens and the commitment, and financial generosity, of Japanto the humanitarian reconstruction of Iraq,

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The three Japanese are private individuals, and friends of Iraq. . . The People of Japan has(sic) both respect and friendship for the people of Iraq. For many years, Japan has actively
cooperated for building hospitals and schools. Even as I speak Japan is working for thereconstruction of Iraq, with a significant sum of money and personnel. Japan’s Self-Defense
Forces are also dispatched for this purpose.37
After releasing her video, Kawaguchi held telephone talks with the Syrian government andreceived assurances of their cooperation in the release of the three citizens.
Except for affirming that he would not give in to the abductors' demands by withdrawing
the troops, Prime Minister Koizumi, however, was noticeably inconspicuous; he waspreparing to meet with U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney who arrived the day after theabduction (April 10). Cheney was planning to stay four days in Japan, to join in Japan’slineup of commemorative activities surrounding the 150th anniversary of the signing of theJapan-U.S. Treaty of Peace and Amity (Treaty of Kanagawa) on 31 March 1854. The
festivities would offer Cheney the opportunity to express appreciation to Japan forproviding troops and engineers in Iraq. Specifically, his agenda included asking Japan to
double its noncombat forces in Iraq.38
While the mass media had long been planning to fete U.S.-Japan amity, what they got
instead, in the immediate start of the hostage crisis, was a test of the U.S.-Japan alliance, areality that was antithetical to the public rhetoric of binational unity that the festivities
were to promote. On 31 March 2004 in Washington, D.C.—the same day that Iraqi grenades
killed four American civilian contractors and a mob hung two of them from a bridge overthe Euphrates—150 American dignitaries, including members of the Pentagon, the State
Department, Congress and the corporate community, joined Japanese dignitaries anddescendants of Commodore Matthew C. Perry, the man credited with the Treaty of
Kanagawa that opened Japan to the world after its long period of isolation, to celebratepeaceful U.S.-Japan relations. The ceremonies involved presenting a facsimile of the original
treaty (burned long ago in a fire), showcasing an exhibit celebrating the treaty (organizedby the National Archives), and making an addition to the celebrated line of cherry trees
presented as a gift from Japan in 1912. In his remarks, Ambassador Kato Ryozo stated that“over those 150 years [of U.S.-Japan amity], our two worlds have merged into one.” Theambassador went on to praise the efforts of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces to aid Bush’s
war on terrorism in the Indian Ocean and Iraq, and asserted that “[N]ever has the Japan-U.S.
relationship been so close, and never has there been a time when it’s required that we be so
close.” The American speakers also uttered the same words of selective memory, allianceunity and praise for Japanese assistance to the Bush administration’s antiterrorism
efforts.39
In his widely-circulated essay, the American ambassador to Japan, Howard Baker, pitched
the alliance as “the best team,”
We increasingly eat the same food, listen to the same music, and wear the same fashions.
More importantly, we enjoy the same freedoms, and share the same values. As we see
symbolized with Hideki Matsui playing here in Japan this month wearing a New YorkYankee uniform, we are on the same team. As teammates, we work together for a common
purpose, especially when the game is on the line.40

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In Japan, the discourse of alliance unity was quashed amid the ensuing turmoil in Iraq,
since after the abductions of the first three Japanese citizens only a few days after the
Washington side of the amity celebration, the press homed in on the question of whether or
not the Japanese public would in fact continue to support the troops. Broadcast and print
media gave blanket coverage to the hostage-taking, alternating between the video footageof the hostages and the gathering of outspoken family members in Tokyo willing to take on
Koizumi for his unflinching support of Bush and the American invasion.
On 9 April, family members urged Koizumi to withdraw the troops and not send in an
American-led rescue team; they also grimaced at Foreign Minister Kawaguchi’s mention of
the Self-Defense Forces' humanitarianism and Koizumi’s referring to the hostage-takers as“terrorists,” fearing such statements would stiffen the resolve of the kidnappers. And family
members charged Koizumi with his “personal responsibility” in a press conference in
Nagata-cho (the government area of Tokyo). Though Koizumi did not meet with the seven
relatives directly, he issued a statement saying, “This is not a problem concerning myself.
This is a problem concerning how the whole country should cope with stabilization andreconstruction of Iraq.” The elder brother of hostage Imai replied, “That (comment) is
unforgivable, considering our current sentiment.” The mother of hostage Koriyama replied,“I really feel that (in Koizumi’s view) the state comes before human rights of the three now
confined.”41 Family members also made other television and public appearances, and somespoke to Al-Arabiya, based in the United Arab Emirates, and to Qatar-based Al-Jazeera.
On whether the Japanese public supported Koizumi’s affirmation to stay the course, aKyodo News telephone poll found that 45.2 percent disagreed with the decision, and 43.5
percent supported the policy to keep the troops in Iraq. The poll also showed that 80
percent felt Koizumi would be “responsible” if a Japanese were injured in Iraq, and 36
percent felt he should resign if a Japanese were killed there.42 Fukushima Mizuho, leader of
the Social Democratic Party, called on Koizumi to resign over his “responsibility” for thecrisis, and demanded immediate withdrawal of Japanese troops from Iraq (10 April).
In 1960, massive mob protests against the U.S.-Japan security treaty were so strong thatJapan had to stop President Eisenhower from making a state visit—the Japanese
government having failed to meet American demands to keep the “leftists” under control.
Demonstrations in 2004 in no way approached that level, but the Iraq war brought out
political sentiments, both pro-Alliance/patriotic and anti-war (rarely, if ever, antiAmerican), that had been unseen in Japan for decades. Yet Koizumi’s ruling Liberal
Democratic Party (LDP) wasted no time throwing the discourse of “responsibility” back to
the people. The following summary (mostly compiled by theAsahi Shimbun) presents key
statements of government officials to blame the hostages and their families themselves as
bearing “self-responsibility,”
9 April, from Environmental Minister Koike Yuriko: “Wasn’t that reckless? It is mostly theirown responsibility to go to places deemed dangerous.”
12 April, from Vice Foreign Minister Takeuchi Yukio: “They must be aware of the principleof personal responsibility and reconsider how they can protect themselves.”

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15 April, from Chief Cabinet Secretary Fukuda Yasuo: “They may have gone on their own
but they must consider how many people they caused trouble to because of their action.”
16 April, New Komeito [an LDP coalition party] Secretary-General Fuyushiba Tetsuzo: “Thegovernment should reveal to the public how much it cost to respond to this crisis.”
16 April, Inoue Kiichi, minister in charge of disaster management: “The families shouldhave first said they were sorry for causing trouble; was it appropriate for them to ask for
SDF withdrawal first of all?”
27 April, Kashimura Takeaki, Upper House Member of Parliament: “I cannot help feeling
discomfort in or strongly against spending several billion yen of taxpayers’ money on suchantigovernment, anti-Japan elements.”43
Under pressure, the family members issued a series of apologies to the Japanese public
beginning on 12 April. When the release of the trio was announced and confirmed, Takato’s
brother and some other Japanese officials traveled to Kuwait to meet them. The gesture
was not just meant to be friendly; the kidnapping victims needed to know about theatmosphere in Japan and that they would be expected to apologize. In Takato’s case it was
already too late: she had already issued a statement claiming she bore no ill feelings toward
the Iraqi people and hoped to stay there; Imai also stated he hoped to stay on (in fact hehad only just arrived when abducted).
Over the next month, interviews and blogs latched onto the “blame the victim” mentality.
Predictably, reporters dished dirt by showing that Takato was a former juvenile delinquent
who sniffed paint thinner, that Imai’s parents were Communists and were exploiting thenaïve young man for their own politics, and that ex-SDF member Koriyama was married
once and divorced, with children. The tabloidShukan Shincho delivered perhaps the mostthorough censure of the hostages, reporting that the international terrorism department ofJapan’s Police Agency first analyzed the possibility that the entire kidnapping was a hoax;
many blogs argued it was. The tabloid also quoted a senior LDP source as confirming that aJapan Communist Party Youth League member was present at every press conference givenby the families.44
The release statement: Another under-scrutinized piece of information was the releasestatement, loosely translated on 11 April by Kyodo News.45 The statement sent by the
militant group Saraya al-Mujahideen (Mujahideen Brigades) to the Arabic news channel AlJazeera revealed the “common ground” between the victims and the captors,• It [the Saraya al-Mujahideen] wants the friendly Japanese public, who are still sufferingfrom the abuse by the United States, to pressure the Japanese government to withdraw its
Self-Defense Forces troops from Iraq because the dispatch is illegal and contributes to the
U.S. occupation.
• It has decided on the release to show the whole world that the resistance in Iraq does
not target peaceful foreign civilians of whatever religion, race, political party or rank.
• It has confirmed through its own sources that the (three) Japanese have been helping
Iraqi people and that they have not been contaminated by subservience to the occupying
nations.

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• It made the decision also out of consideration for the pain of the hostages’ families andout of respect for the Japanese public’s stance on the issue. . . .
• It has heard the Japanese public say the U.S., which killed masses in Hiroshima andNagasaki with atomic bombs, is carrying out a massacre in Fallujah using bombs bannedinternationally.
• It is committed to the holy war until victory.46
The gist of this partially translated statement linked the Japanese people to the Iraqi people
because both were still suffering from American aggression, occupation and continued
military subordination: specifically, Fallujah is mentioned as a counterpart to Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. This release statement was announced at a slow news moment, Saturdaynight, and was read again on Sunday talk shows the following day, but was rarely
mentioned in major media after that. But on the famously congested “2 Channel,” anInternet bulletin board, detractors wrote that the abductors should not invoke “Hiroshima,
Nagasaki” since those places were special to Japan only and the captors had no idea about
their significance. [47] While there is no forgiveness implied here toward the criminal
brutality of the abductors, the “Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Fallujah” reference did resonate withother anti-war citizens interested in relations with more peaceful Iraqis, and further
weakens the illusion of national conformity within Japan.
With the sudden crescendo of “self-responsibility” diverting media attention from
America’s war in Iraq to social wars in Japan, the Cheney visit was rendered
unproblematic; the American vice president expressed his concern about the hostages, hisappreciation for the SDF deployment, and his approval to Koizumi for keeping the troops in
Iraq. On 13 April, just after the flames of “self responsibility” flared, Cheney gave a barelypublicized speech in Tokyo to honor the Kanagawa Treaty, calling U.S.-Japan relations “oneof the great achievements in modern history.”48
Some of Koizumi’s critics doubted whether the Japanese government’s efforts led to therelease of the hostages, as implied in the demand that the hostages pay the taxpayers back.
Journalist Tachibana Takashi reported that Japanese officials were consistently one ormore steps behind efforts undertaken by Iraqi citizens who became sympathetic to thehostages (and especially to Takato, who had worked for the Iraqi people) and were criticalof the American occupation and Japanese troop dispatch. “Fundamentally the one who
saved Takato was Takato herself.”49
Though the hostages and their families were silenced for several weeks, others critical of
Koizumi continued to speak. On 26 April, more than sixty nongovernmental organizations
urged officials and the media to stop blaming the victims personally, complaining that thisin effect constituted an attack on all other aid workers and journalists in Iraq. In a jointstatement signed by 3,000 individuals, the group asserted, “The notion of selfresponsibility will create a misguided public sentiment that NGO members working inconflict areas are themselves responsible, even if their lives are threatened . . . and could
lead to restricting NGO activities abroad.”50 Moreover, although the victims were inundatedwith hate mail after their repatriation, Takato noted after publishing her memoir half aJapan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

137

year later that she received letters of support as well as apologies for the hate mail aftersome time had passed and people understood the situation better.
The second pair of hostages, Watanabe and Yasuda, was actually more strident in theircriticism of the media and government officials who were blaming the victims and theirfamilies for the abductions. Responding to the charge that they were “anti-Japan elements,”
Watanabe responded dryly in a press conference soon after their release, “Yes, I am against
Japan and thank you for recognizing my opinions.”51 In June, Yasuda gave candid interviews
revealing that he and Watanabe, like the first three, were treated differently by rotating
captors and that he (Yasuda) even arm-wrestled with the children and taught them karate.
“Half of me was happy I survived,” he stated; yet “the other half wanted to spend more timewith them. I wanted to see more of their lives. I wanted to see them attack the Americans. I
asked them to take me with them.”52
Not in America?
If journalists paid too much attention to Japan’s homogeneity, they paid insufficientattention to conformity in America. Reconsider Plate’s above-mentioned assumption thatthe cold hostage homecoming could only happen in the “East,” with its hierarchical values
and obedience to the paternal sovereign, and its lack of heroic journalists and civil society
enjoyed by the “West.” The media watch group, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR),
has compiled considerable evidence to show that, from 2002 until Bush’s “Mission
Accomplished” putative “end of major hostilities” announcement in May,2003, America’s
mainstream media repeatedly followed the “paternal sovereign” by failing to question theBush administration’s claims of weapons of mass destruction, its main rationale for theinvasion. Major news media gave short shrift to the writers trying to expose the faulty logicof the war while putting cheerleaders in the spotlight.53 MSNBC’s Chris Matthews evengushed that,
We’re proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has alittle swagger, who’s physical, who’s not a complicated guy like Clinton … They want a guy
who’s president. Women like a guy who’s president. Check it out. The women like this war.
I think we like having a hero as our president. It’s simple.54
America and Britain also expected that journalists be “embedded” rather than “unilateral”
in the early phase of the war. American leaders of the current Iraqi campaign invented theconcept of “embedding” to refer to journalists who would be civilian members of militarydivisions and perhaps even train with the soldiers. Embeds theoretically have better accessto military information and better opportunities to report on and photograph the war;perhaps the biggest bonus is that they get military protection and can feel safer. The tradeoff, critics point out, is that embeds become less critical. A Newsweek story quoted anembed who said that any embedded journalist who didn’t feel conflicted about the thoughtof being pressured to write flattering stories for the government was a liar.55
Warnings to the non-embedded, so-called “unilateral” journalists echoed Japan’sadmonitions to the self-responsible: authorities announce that it’s too risky to be on one’s
own.56 “Risky” may be an understatement: Reporters Without Borders reported that 225
journalists and media assistants have been killed in Iraq since fighting began there in
March 2003, making that conflict the bloodiest for journalists since World War II.57

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Several months into the war, a few embedded reporters demonstrated their courage towrite stories inconsistent with official military spin. Instead, writes Kellner, it was the U.S.
broadcast networks that were “on the whole more embedded in the Pentagon and the Bushadministration than the reporters and print journalists were in the field.” The television
stations produced “highly sanitized views of the war, rarely showing Iraqi casualties,” andprofited as “cheerleaders for the country’s war effort.”58
Media diversions are common in war; the repetitions of "freedom," "democracy" and"humanitarian action" distract from or even silence reportage on catastrophic failures andhuman tragedy.59 Japan’s moral affirmation of jiko sekinin distracted from Japanese antiwar protests, cracks in the 150-year amity between the United States and Japan, and thesymbolism of the equation of Fallujah with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. America’s massconformity at the start of the war in 2003 used heroics to distract from the illegal invasion.
Kellner describes the “Jessica Lynch story” as a Pentagon-produced mythology fed into
broadcast networks. Lynch was an attractive young POW for whom American troops
supposedly staged a dramatic rescue, hyping the story (it was later discovered) not only torally mass support for the U.S. troops, but also to distract media from telling the real story,
which was the beginning phase of the coalition’s entry into Baghdad.60
Finally, the initial disclosures of prisoner abuse in the Abu Ghraib facility in Iraq were
exposed on 28 April 2004. Visual evidence of naked and hooded prisoners, placed inbizarre, stressful, painful, scatological, and sexually humiliating positions, generated
protest and censure throughout the world. The exposure occurred less than one monthafter the Japanese hostage incident, and the Bush administration also made efforts to pin“responsibility” for the abuse to a small group of outsiders, in this case, the “bad apples”
playing “Animal House on the night shift.”61 Such damage-controlling phrases showing the“deviance” of the Abu Ghraib prison guards attempted to distract the public from theofficially sanctioned torture used throughout America’s overseas prison network.
According to journalism professor Mark Danner, the majority of Americans was willing tobelieve the myth of “bad apples” just so that their faith in the American military project
would not be disturbed.62
The Abu Ghraib photos not only opened up wider investigations into communication along
a military chain of command, they also led to more critical uses of media to educate
Americans about abuses of authority during war.63 Independent media in particular havecreated more and more spaces for critical voices to express opposition to theunconstitutionality of the wars and associated interrogation and incarceration
practices. Even in mainstream media, these topics have come to be debated almost daily,
and former Bush officials, former interrogators, and former military personnel in thecapacities of “winter soldiers” or resistors have also begun to air their stories.
The five former abductees continued their work after a brief hiatus of hiding from public
scrutiny. They have written memoirs and made several presentations in Japan and abroad.
Takato has continued her work for Iraqi schools and hospitals through several NGOs, andin particular, through her own Iraq Hope Network.64 According to her blog, she made abrief trip back to Iraq in April 2009, in part to put the experience of five years ago behindher.65

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At least two incidents offered a chance to compare American reactions to a hostage
situation similar to that of Japan’s, though both occurred after the Iraq war’s first year ofintense media-supported nationalism. In November 2005, four male members of theChristian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) were kidnapped in Iraq. One was American; two were
Canadian, and one was a British member of the organization that is supported byinternational pacifist churches such as Mennonites and Friends, and also includes nonChristians. The group practices non-violent, non-proselytizing activism, and in Iraq had
begun to document prisoner detainee abuses committed by Americans even before the Abu
Ghraib disclosure. Ignoring their faith-based service, conservative radio host, Rush
Limbaugh, first raised the possibility that the kidnapping might be a hoax. He thendeclared that he “liked” the kidnapping, or “any time a bunch of leftist feel-good handwringers are shown reality.” 66 Tragically, the American member was killed, and the otherthree released after three months.
The second incident was the kidnapping of the American journalist Jill Carroll in Iraq in
January 2006. Nearly two years since the abductions of the Japanese citizens, many things
had changed. Hostage-taking had become more commonplace and dangerous, anddomestic and international support for the American-led war had already declined. Jill
Carroll was released safely after 83 days rather than one week, and although she was afree-lance journalist, she was then on assignment with the Christian Science Monitor tointerview a top Sunni Arab political leader. Still, there were important similarities. Like
Takato, Carroll had studied Arabic and made many efforts to interact on friendly termswith Iraqis. While in captivity, she made statements, always appearing in hijab, critical ofBush’s “illegal war” in Iraq. Just as private efforts were made to advocate for the release of
the Japanese hostages, especially owing to Takato’s network of humanitarian workers,67
Carroll’s employer, the Christian Science Monitor, according to veteran journalist Robert
Zelnick, also made every effort to gain international support for her release, mobilizing along list of individuals and organizations that included Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood,
America’s Council for Islamic-American Relations and Iraq’s Muslim Scholars Association.68
Upon being freed, she stated while still in Iraq, her captors treated her well, though she had
been moved around frequently and never knew what would happen.69
Echoing the backlash against the Japanese hostages in Japan, angry citizens in America also
charged that Carroll had unwisely exposed herself to danger; that she had become one of
the terrorists herself; and that she was an anti-American traitor. Most rants rumbled fromthe blogosphere 70, but some were urged on by professional commentators, including one
who compared her to a “Taliban Johnny” who “may be carrying Habib’s baby.”71
Unlike the Japanese victims, when Carroll left Iraq she quickly recanted the statements she
had made there as propaganda she was forced to do under threats to her life. Yet bashingagainst her continued, even though her abduction and release occurred after American
media had become much less conformist in their support the war. The point is thatdemanding conformity of one’s own citizens has also occurred in America in times ofheightened nationalism and compromised democracy; though America celebrates
its relative free speech, tactics echoing McCarthyist red-baiting during the Cold War are
not entirely in the past.

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Conclusion
As for whether the Japanese hostage homecoming can be understood as an expression ofJapanese cultural norms demanding obedience to the group, or geopolitical norms
demanding Japanese subservience to America by keeping dissidence under control, theanswer is both, and more. Beyond the myths of unchanging cultural norms, the security
regimes of nations at war invariably generate increased demand for socio-politicalconformity, and in the case of America and Japan, the symbiosis of national feelings of unity
also helps maintain the exceptionality of the U.S.-Japan alliance. Until the decline ofAmericans’ own support for the Iraqi invasion—during the window of grace between“Mission Accomplished” and Abu Ghraib—insufficient attention was paid to anti-war
pressures within American society and to opposition in Japan to that nation’s support for
the war and the alliance.72
Not only is it necessary to rethink social relations beyond nations, it is also important torecognize the democratic potential of media “common places” that give voice to a diverse
citizenry within and beyond borders, preventing manipulative tactics such as changing themeaning of “self-responsibility” to “nationalist conformity.”[73] In both Japan and America,
journalists and aid workers hoping to put checks and balances on abusive powers ofnations were rebuffed in the early phase of the Iraq war. But such media diversity isnecessary to challenge emotional reactions that coalesce around tired and uncomplicatedimages of nations, a reaction that in itself can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Marie Thorsten is Professor in the Global Communications Faculty of Doshisha University(Kyoto), specializing in International Politics and Media Studies. From 2016-17 she is a
Visiting Senior Fellow in the Centre for International Studies of London School of
Economics, and a guest professor at University of Oslo’s Department of Culture Studies andOriental Languages. Her research concerns international relations, US-Japan relations andglobal education. She is the author of Superhuman Japan: Knowledge, Nation and Culture in
US-Japan Relations (Routledge, 2012), forthcoming in paperback (2017)
Notes
1 See Aihwa Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty (Duke

University Press, 2006), 5.

2 Takahashi Tetsuya, “Philosophy as Activism in Neo-liberal, Neo-nationalist Japan”(interview), Japan Focus, November 3, 2007 (orig., 2004-2005, trans. Norma Field), 8.
3 Samuel P. Huntington, “Japan’s Role in Global Politics,” International Relations of the Asia-

Pacific 1(2001), 139.

4 Douglas Kellner, Media Spectacle and the Crisis of Democracy (Boulder: Paradigm, 2005),

78.

5 Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (trans., Kevin Atell) (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 2005), 50, 84-85.

6 Agamben, State of Exception, 2-3.

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7 See Peter J. Spiro, “The New Sovereigntists: American Exceptionalism and Its False

Prophets,” Foreign Affairs(November/December 2000): 9-15.

8 Frequently cited rejected treaties include the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; theConvention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of AntiPersonnel Mines and on their Destruction; a protocol to create a compliance regime for the
Biological Weapons Convention; the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, and the AntiBallistic Missile Treaty. The United States has also signed but not ratified the Convention on
the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination
against Women. When President George W. Bush took office, he ‘unsigned’ the UnitedStates from The Treaty Establishing and International Criminal Court, which had
previously been signed, but not ratified, by President Clinton. See Isaac Baker, “Rogue
State? US Spurns Treaty after Treaty,” Inter Press Service, 8 December 2005.
9 For further information on perception of the Iraq War as illegal, see David Krieger, “TheWar on Iraq as Illegal and Illegitimate,” in Ramesh Thakur and Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu,
eds., The Iraq Crisis and World Order: Structural, Institutional and Normative Changes(NewYork: United Nations University Press), pp. 381-396.
10 Condoleezza Rice, “Princeton University’s Celebration of the 75th Anniversary Of the

Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs,” lecture presentation,
Princeton University, September 30, 2005 (U.S. Department of State).
11 The comparison between the Allied Occupation of Japan in 1945 that enjoyed the full

support of the international community, and Iraq in the early moment of the invasion, wasso dangerously flawed, according to historian John Dower, that it should have instead“stood as a warning that we were lurching toward war with no idea of what we were reallygetting into.” See John W. Dower, “A Warning from History,” Boston
Review (February/March 2003).
12 Samuel P. Huntington 2001, ibid.
13 Samuel P. Huntington, “The Lonely Superpower,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 1999: 35-

49.

14 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, “Recent Trends in Military

Expenditure.”

15 CIA World Factbook, 2008 estimates of GDP (purchasing power parity).
16 Inoguchi Takashi, “America and Japan: The Personal is Political,” Open Democracy, 17June 2004, 1-6, retrieved at www.opendemocracy.net on 20 August 2006.

17 Duncan Currie, “The Other Special Relationship,” The Weekly Standard, 20 December

2004, 16.

18 See Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Record of Discussion.”
19 Cited in Gavan McCormack, “Koizumi’s Japan in Bush’s World: After 9/11,” Japan Focus,

12 October 2004; 2-3.

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20 Cited in McCormack 2004, ibid., 9. Also, Japan pulled its troops out of Iraq in 2008 and is

attempting to ease the burden of American militarism on Okinawa, but other plans show
the alliance is being redefined and expanded even more along military lines. A new
realignment package will have Japan and America placing their command centers on thesame bases in newly defined “base towns” throughout the country, and Japan has agreed topay 700 billion yen to help the US set up a new base in Guam. (“Japan-U.S. Relations”[editorial], Asahi Shimbun 4 May 2006, 28.) In 2004 the United States and Japan agreed to
exchange information on the deployment and operations of a missile defense shield.
21 Koizumi’s ability to steer public and official opinion toward support of the troops hadmuch to do with his linking their mission only to that of humanitarian, non-combat,
reconstruction; he also assured the public “there is no security problem” in Samawah—apoint later qualified into rendering Samawah as not having any hostilities conducted by“states or quasi-state organizations.” The relatively secure, isolated situation for theJapanese soldiers was also described as operating under joint command headquarters,
rather than America’s requirement of “unified command.” Cited in McCormack, ibid., 2004,
5-7.
22 See Tachibana Takashi, “Koizumi Iraq hahei‘kurutta shinario’” (The “desperate scenario”
of Koizumi’s Iraq dispatch) Gekkan Gendai [monthly Gendai] 38, no. 6 (June 2004): 28-41.
23 “Former Japanese Iraq Hostages Criticize Media, Govt.,” Reuters 27 April 2004.
24 The first three were requested to each pay 2.37 million yen (US$21,000). “Former

Japanese,” ibid.; the next two, about US$500. Tama Miyake Lung, “Former Iraq hostage
Jumpei Yasuda eager to go back,” Japan Today, 7 June 2004. This author has no information
on whether any of the payments were actually made. According to an interview with
Takato in September, 2004, she was planning to pay only for her ticket from Baghdad to
Dubai following negotiations between her lawyers and the Foreign Ministry. See
Matsumoto Chie, “Bouncing Back: Former Iraq Hostage continues Humanitarian
Battle,” IHT/Asahi Shimbun, 18 September 2004, also at Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus.
25 Tom Plate, “The Power of Asian Values [column],” The Los Angeles Times, 28 April 2004.
26 Norimitsu Onishi, “Japanese are Cold to Freed Hostages,” The International Herald

Tribune, 23 April 2004.

27 Cited in “Perception Gap: Debate Swirls over Hostages’ Responsibility,” The Asahi

Shimbun, 21 April, 2004, 21.

28 Bashing, dir. Kobayashi Masahiro (Monkey Town Productions, 2005).
29 John Dower, cited in Kathleen Krauth and Lynn Parisi, “An Interview with John

Dower,” Education About Asia 5, no. 3 (Winter 2000); also, John W. Dower, Japan in War
and Peace: Selected Essays (New York: New Press, 1993), 274.
30 Dower 1993, ibid., 274.
31 Dower, cited in Krauth and Parisi, ibid.

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32 Cited in Andrew Marshall, “Briton among 11 Hostages Seized in Iraq,” Reuters UK Online,

8 April 2004.

33 The salvo of hostage-takings that began in the spring of 2004 was preceded by America’s

shutdown of the Al-Hazwa newspaper, on 28 March (three days before the killing of thefour American contractors and ten days before the capture of Imai, Koriyama and Takato).
Coalition authorities would not tolerate the newspaper because it was controlled by theShiite cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, Al-Hazwa, whom Americans feared had the capacity to“incite violence.” This un-democratic action led to widespread protests and disastrous loss
for the American-led coalition; nearly 40 Americans and 300 Iraqis were killed. The
subsequent hostage-takings continued for the next two years to such an extent that theabductee became an icon of the war itself as well as an indication of the war’s global reach.
The Hostage Working Group showed that as of May 2006, 439 foreigners of 60 nationalities
and several professions were abducted; 18% of those killed. See Erik Rye and Joon Mo
Kang, “Hostages of War,” International Herald Tribune, 18 May 2006, 8.
34 Takato Nahoko, Senso to heiwa: soredemo Irakijin wo kirai ni narenai [War and peace: or,

why I still won’t hate the Iraqi people] (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2004), 66.
35 Takato, Senso to heiwa, ibid., 64-68.

36 “Editorial,” IHT/The Asahi Shimbun, 19 April, 2004 [original published in vernacular on

4/18/04), 21.

37 Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), Message from Ms. Yoriko Kawaguchi, Minister of

Foreign Affairs, to the members of the Saraya-Al-Mujahadeen. 10 April, 2004.

38 Tom Raum, “Cheney to urge Japan to stay course in Iraq,” Washington Times [AssociatedPress], 12 April 2004.

39 National Association of Japan-America Societies, “Japan-America 150th Anniversary: A

Commemorative Ceremony and Exhibit.”

40 Howard Baker, Jr., The Best Team, U.S. Department of State United States Embassy: Japan

Official Homepage, 25 March 2004.

41 Cited in Reiji Yoshida, “Families Opposed to U.S. Rescue Operation, The Japan Times, 11

April 2004, 1.

42 “Public is split over policy not to pull out SDF: survey,” The Japan Times, 11 April 2004, 2.
43 Cited in “Perception Gap: Debate Swirls over Hostages” Responsibility, ibid., and“Hostages ‘Anti-Japan’: Lawmaker,” The Japan Times, 27 April, 2004.

44 I am grateful for the summary of this news provided by Fumiko Halloran, [Listserve]

Shukan Shincho on Japanese NBR’S JAPAN FORUM (POL), 23 April, 2004, retrieved on 1
May 2004.
45 The Islamic Clerics Committee that arranged the release said that it would occur in 24

hours, although the actual release of the hostages was a few days later. Some believed areport originally put out by Radio France that the delay was a result of Koizumi’s depictionof the hostage-takers as terrorists, when he rejected the demands of the militant group toThorsten: The Homecoming of Japanese Hostages in Iraq

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pull troops out Iraq by saying, “We will not bow to any despicable threat by terrorists.”
Cited in Kyodo World Service, 13 April 2004; retrieved on 16 April 2004.
46 “Highlights of Captors’ Statement on Freeing Japanese Hostages,” Kyodo News on the

Web 11 April 2004.

47 See 2channeru (2 channel) (bulletin board), comments on 11 April 2004.
48 Cited in Brad Glosserman, “U.S.-Japan Relations: Mr. Koizumi’s Payback,” Pacific Forum

CSIS.

49 Tachibana, ibid., 28-29.
50 Cited in “Hostages ‘Anti-Japan,’” 2004, ibid.
51 “Former Japanese Iraq Hostages Criticize Media,” ibid.
52 Cited in Tama Miyake Lung, “Former Iraq hostage Jumpei Yasuda eager to go back,” Japan

Today, 7 June 2004.

53 Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, “Iraq and the Media: A Critical Timeline,” 19 March

2007.

54 Chris Matthews, MSNBC, 1 May 2003, cited in Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, ibid.
55 Newsweek.com, 22 April 2003, cited in Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, ibid.
56 In a worst-imagined scenario, an Al-Jazeera correspondent, a Reuters reporter, andthirteen members of the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) were all killed on
8 April 2003 by American fire, presumed by some critics to have been actually “targeted”
because of their independent, non-embeddedness. Michel Chossudovsy, “Killing the‘Unembedded Truth,’” Center for Research on Globalisation, 11 April 2003; retrieved from.
The United States has acknowledged that three Reuters reporters were killed by their own
forces, though they claim the soldiers fired with justifiable reason. Other journalists havebeen illegally detained or abused by American soldiers, according to Reuters Global
Managing Editor, David Schlesinger, who has called on the United States to recognize the“legitimate rights of journalists in conflict zones under international law.” In his statement
to the U.S. Armed Services Committee, Schlesinger states, “The worsening situation for
professional journalists in Iraq directly limits journalists’ abilities to do their jobs and,more importantly, creates a serious chilling effect on the media overall.” Barry Moody,“Reuters says US Troops Obstruct Reporting of Iraq,” Reuters, 28 September 2005.
57 Reporters Without Borders (homepage).
58 Douglas Kellner 2005, ibid., 66-67.
59 Douglas Kellner, “Spectacle and Media Propaganda in the War on Iraq: A Critique of U.S.

Broadcasting Networks”, online at the Institution of Communication Studies, University ofLeeds [circa 2003].
60 Douglas Kellner 2005, ibid., 66. As CNN correspondent Tim Mintier expressed it, theAmerican officials “buried the lead” in an attempt to manage the news that was becomingJapan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

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more and more perceptible at the time. Mintier’s views are featured in the documentaryfilm, Control Room, dir., Jehane Noujaim (Magnolia Pictures, 2003).
61 Bush and others referred to the twelve low-ranking officers serving prison sentences forabuse as “bad apples”; the guards are now appealing their sentences. See “’Abu Ghraib US
Prison Guards were Scapegoats for Bush,’ Lawyers Claim,” Times Online, 2 May 2009;references to “night shift” were also frequent among Bush officials, and the expression,“Animal House on the night shift” attributed to former Secretary of Defense James
Schlesinger who chaired an independent panel on the prisoner abuse scandal. See “TheInvestigations,” PBS Frontline, The Torture Question, 2005.
62 “Interview: Mark Danner,” PBS Frontline, The Torture Question, ibid.
63 “Torturefest and the Passage to Pedagogy of Tortured Pasts,” in François Debrix andMark J. Lacy, eds., The Geopolitics of American Insecurity (London: Routledge, 2009), 71-87.
64 Iraq Hope Network. Excerpts from Imai’s memoir, with a substantive introduction by

Norma Field, can be found at Imai Noriaki, “Why I went to Iraq: Reflections of a Japanese
Hostage,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 29 December 2007.
65 Iraq Hope Diary.
66 “Limbaugh on Kidnapping of Peace Activists in Iraq,” Media Matters, 30 November 2005.
67 See also the “Appeal on Behalf of the Hostages to the Sara Al Mujahedeen,” featured in

Imai Noriaki, “Why I went to Iraq,” ibid.

68 Robert Zelnick, “Jill Carroll and the Politics of Terrorism,” The Guardian Unlimited, 31

March 2006.

69 I have no definitive information on the extent to which the release of either the Japanese

hostages or Carroll was influenced by such private efforts, since governments are typicallysecretive about such matters, but in both cases the paper trail of private support was
substantial.
70 Highlights from the blogosphere available at Melonyce McAfee, “Female Trouble,” Slate,

30 March 2006.

71 Bernard McGuirk, executive producer of “Imus in the Morning”, who regularly

antagonizes the radio/television program’s regular host, Don Imus. Citation and video
available at Think Progress.
72 A later hostage incident involving a Japanese yielded different results. Seven months

after the release of the five Japanese hostages, a 24-year old Japanese ESL student in New
Zealand traveled to Jordan for adventure. On a whim, or for reasons unknown, Koda Shosei
crossed the forbidden line into Iraq. He was captured immediately. His captors, this time a
different brigade, issued a video with a statement threatening to kill him if Japan did notwithdraw its troops. Though Koda had transgressed, the Foreign Minister (Machimura)
responded swiftly; while not dispatching troops, government officials claimed to do what
they could to secure the release of the young man. Their efforts failed, however, and Koda
was beheaded. This time, however, the issue received comparatively little coverage andThorsten: The Homecoming of Japanese Hostages in Iraq146

was overshadowed by Japan’s worst earthquake in a decade. Koda was not known for any
politically controversial actions or statements. Neither the presence of the Americancoalition, nor the US-Japan alliance itself, was at a crucial moment of testing.
[73] On media common places, see Paulo Virno, A Grammar of the Multitude: For an Analysis
of Contemporary Forms of Life (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2004), 38-44.

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When the Self-Defense Forces went overseas to support combat operations for the firsttime since 1945, this might have sparked debate among Japanese about their own wartime
past. However, this did not happen much, writes Tokudome Kinue. One controversial
issue in Japan, as elsewhere, was the practice known as waterboarding, a torture method
used on detainees caught in Iraq and Afghanistan. As Tokudome explains in“Waterboarding: The Meaning for Japan,” Japan had used the controversial torture
method during World War II on Chinese and Korean forced laborers and on American
POWs. She reminds her readers that former victims have long memories and that, every
time waterboarding comes back into international consciousness, people will recall
Japanese wrongdoing. Japan needs to confront its past squarely, admonishes Tokudome,“achieving reconciliation with former victims, and winning the trust of the international
community.” By implication, this is criticism of American use of torture too, although
Tokudome does not focus on this issue.
Waterboarding: The Meaning for Japan
Kinue Tokudome
January 12, 2009http://apjjf.org/-Kinue-TOKUDOME/3024/article.html"If you look at the history of the use of that technique used by the Khmer Rouge,
used in the inquisition, used by the Japanese and prosecuted by us as war crimes, we
prosecuted our own soldiers in Vietnam, I agree with you, Mr. Chairman,
waterboarding is torture."1
The above statement made by Eric Holder during his confirmation hearing for Attorney
General marked a clean break from the policy of the Bush administration on“waterboarding,”2 the interrogation technique used by the CIA on at least three Al-Qaida
suspects, and on the general issue of the use of torture in US interrogation.
If the Japanese people were surprised to see their country grouped together with the
Khmer Rouge, medieval torturers who brutally persecuted heretics, and US soldiers during
the Vietnam War, some of whom were court-martialed, 3 they should not have been.

Waterboarding in Vietnam

Tokudome: Waterboarding: The Meaning in Japan148

In the past few years, waterboarding by the Japanese military has often been mentioned in
the discussion on this topic in Congress, the media, and among those who had
unforgettable memories of experiencing it and witnessing it.
Senator Ted Kennedy, in opposing the confirmation of Michael Mukasey as Attorney
General, made the following statement on the Senate floor on November 8, 2007.
It is illegal under the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit “outrages upon personaldignity,'' including cruel, humiliating, and degrading treatment. It is illegal under the
Torture Act, which prohibits acts “specifically intended to inflict severe physical ormental pain or suffering.'' It is illegal under the Detainee Treatment Act, which
prohibits “cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment,'' and it violates the Constitution.
The Nation's top military lawyers and legal experts across the political spectrum
have condemned waterboarding as illegal. After World War II, the United Statesprosecuted Japanese officers for using waterboarding. What more does thisnominee need to enforce existing laws? 4
Senator and presidential candidate John McCain mentioned waterboarding by the Japanese
during his appearance in CBS’ “60 Minutes” on March 9, 2008. He answered when he was
asked if “waterboarding” was torture:
Sure. Yes. Without a doubt…We prosecuted Japanese war criminals after World War
II. And one of the charges brought against them, for which they were convicted, wasthat they water-boarded Americans.5
Some powerful reports on waterboarding by the Japanese military appeared in major
newspapers. Evan Wallach, a judge at the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York,wrote an opinion piece, “Waterboarding Used to Be a Crime,” that was published in the
Washington Post on November 4, 2007:
After Japan surrendered, the United States organized and participated in theInternational Military Tribunal for theFar East, generally called the Tokyo War
Crimes Trials. Leading members of Japan's military and government elite werecharged, among their many other crimes, with torturing Allied military personnel
and civilians. The principal proof upon which their torture convictions were based
was conduct that we would now call waterboarding.
Judge Wallach quoted the testimony of a victim:
They laid me out on a stretcher and strapped me on. The stretcher was then stoodon end with my head almost touching the floor and my feet in the air. . . . They thenbegan pouring water over my face and at times it was almost impossible for me tobreathe without sucking in water.6
Former British POW of the Japanese, Eric Lomax, who was waterboarded by the Japanesemilitary police, the Kempeitai, during World War II, wrote about his ordeal for the Times of
London on March 4, 2008. A lieutenant in the Royal Signals, Lomax was caught with his
fellow POWs and interrogated about their secretly assembled radio.

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The whole operation was a long and agonising sequence of near-drowning, choking,vomiting and muscular struggling with the water flowing with ever-changing
force. . . . How long the torture lasted, I do not know. It covered a period of somedays, with periods of unconsciousness and semi-consciousness. Eventually I was
dumped in my cell, which was so small it offered little scope for movement. At about
this time two of my colleagues were beaten to death. Their bodies were dumped in a
latrine where they may well remain to this day.7
Gustavo Ingles was tortured mercilessly by the Japanese military when he was captured asa guerrilla in the Philippines. In 1992, he published a book entitled, “Memoirs of Pain”,
where he described various types of waterboarding, including ones he was subjected to.8
Illustrations of waterboarding he received and witnessed were included in his book.

Drawing of waterboarding (Illustration by Rey Rillo)

The experience of witnessing waterboarding also remains etched in the memories of those
who saw it firsthand. Lester Tenney, a Bataan Death March survivor, wrote in his
memoir, My Hitch in Hell, about witnessing his fellow American soldier waterboarded while
he himself was being tortured. It happened after Tenney was recaptured by the Japanesesoldiers following his escape from Camp O’Donnell and a brief stay with guerrillas. The
Japanese wanted to extract information about the guerrillas from Tenney.

Tokudome: Waterboarding: The Meaning in Japan

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Lester Tenney one month after liberation, Sept.1945

For what seemed like an eternity, I just stood and waited for them to say something.
At last the commander gave the interpreter instruction. A few minutes later, a guard
came into the room, raised his rifle, flipped it around so that the stock of the gun
was facing me, and with one swift movement hit me with the butt squarely in theface. With one fell swoop, I started to bleed from each and every part of my face. I
knew that my nose was broken, that a few teeth were missing, and that it hurt likehell. Blood was gushing down my shirt to my pants. Everything was getting wet
from the flowing blood. All the while the Japanese were having themselves a goodlaugh. I guess I was truly the butt of the joke.
While I was trying to straighten up, one of the guards hit me across the back with apiece of bamboo filled with dirt or gravel, and once again I fell to my knees. I got up
as fast as I was able and stood at attention in front of the guards. I was left standing
there for about an hour, then three guards came in and dragged me out to theparade ground, which had been the playground of the school.
Once outside, I saw they had another American spread-eagled on a large board. His
head was about ten inches lower than his feet, and his arms and feet were
outstretched and tied to the board. A Japanese soldier was holding the American’s
nose closed while another soldier poured what I later found out was salt water froma tea kettle into the prisoner’s mouth. In a minute or two, the American started
coughing and throwing up water. The Japanese were simulating a drowningsituation while the victim was on land. Every few seconds an officer would lean over
and ask the prisoner a question. If he did not receive an immediate answer he wouldorder that more water be forced into the prisoner’s mouth.
I could not believe my eyes. Torture of this nature was something I had read about
in history books. It was used during the medieval times, certainly not in thetwentieth century. My God, I wondered, what is in store for me?9
Walter Riley was 12 years old when he witnessed waterboarding. He saw it through a holein the fence surrounding Santo Thomas University in Manila that was converted into a
civilian internees’ camp by the Japanese military during World War II. More than 4,000

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civilians from the United States and other Western countries, including many children,
endured more than three years of internment under harsh conditions. Walter recently
wrote to this author:
One day late in 1944, some of us kids were crawling through the weeds in the field
between the gym and the front gate. The weeds were so tall we were able to crawl
right up to the fence without being seen. I looked through a hole in the fence andsaw a young Filipino man tied in a chair with a water hose in his mouth. I got to see
the "water cure" up close. Somehow, I was able to keep from making any noise andquickly crawled away from the fence. I can still see the water coming out of theFilipino's mouth when the soldier hit him in the stomach.
Some things are hard to forget.

Walter Riley in 1946

On his second day in office, President Obama kept his campaign promise to undo many ofthe previous administration’s contentious policies on war on terror. He ordered that theprison at Guantanamo Bay be closed within a year and that detainees be treated inaccordance with the Geneva Conventiosn. The United States, he pledged, would prosecutethe ongoing struggle against violence and terrorism “in a manner that is consistent with
our values and our ideals."
While heated discussion of waterboarding was taking place in the US and around the world,
Japan remained largely silent. The mainstream media reported on the debate in the UnitedStates, but did not report that their country’s history of waterboarding was often
mentioned outside of Japan in this discussion. But didn’t the world expect Japan tocontribute to the discussion by providing insight based on reflection on the nation’s past
behavior?

Tokudome: Waterboarding: The Meaning in Japan152

It is not easy for any nation to revisit its dark history. But the Japanese people should notethat waterboarding by the Japanese was not the only example mentioned in this discussion.
Americans recalled and criticized examples of waterboarding by US troops in thePhilippines-American War of 1898-1902 and by US soldiers during the Vietnam War. The
point of such discussions is not to condemn past behavior for its own sake, but to learn
from the past so as to find appropriate ways for nations to protect their people fromcontemporary threats while hewing to their highest principles.10
Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso, under vigorous questioning in the Diet, recently
admitted that 300 Allied POWs (101 British prisoners, 197 Australians and two Dutch) had
worked at his family coalmine during World War II.11 Japanese Foreign Minister Nakasone
Hirofumi also made this statement in the Diet about the Geneva Convention which
prohibits torture:
I believe it is very meaningful to join such major agreements of international
humanitarian law from the standpoint of both promoting the development ofinternational humanitarian law as well as gaining greater trust in Japan in theinternational community.12
There were nearly 130 POW camps throughout Japan during World War II with some
30,000 Allied POWs who did forced labor under appalling conditions in mines, docks, andfactories owned by companies such as Mitsui and Mitsubishi. More than 3,000 POWs diedon Japanese soil. The Prime Minister has not yet acknowledged that the POWs at Aso
Mining were forced to work, much less that they were abused. But testimonies of former
POWs who worked at Aso Mining paint a grim picture of the conditions under which they
were placed.13
The waterboarding that Senator Kennedy mentioned during the debate on the Senate floor
took place at Fukuoka POW camp # 3, not too far from Fukuoka POW camp #26 where
POWs worked for Aso Mining. POWs held in Japan were forced laborers and they were
subjected to abuse and even torture such as waterboarding. There were also tens of
thousands of forced laborers from the Korean Peninsula and China who were often
subjected to even harsher treatment than Allied POWs.
Only after the Japanese government acknowledges these historical facts, and bothgovernment and corporations take steps to apologize and solve the issues of compensation,
will the statement by Foreign Minister Nakasone on the Geneva Convention becomeconvincing.
It is also essential for the Japanese business community to make a clean break from its
World War II history of using forced laborers.14 Their German counterpart has already set
an example. The international community expects no less from Japan.15
Although their memories of waterboarding are painful, some individuals are making efforts
to make sense out of their experience and to come to terms with it. Former POW Eric
Lomax forgave Nagase Takashi, who was the interpreter while he was waterboarded. He
also met with Komai Osamu, the son of the Japanese officer who ordered the torture of
Lomax and who was executed after the war as a war criminal. When Komai traveled toEngland and apologized for his father’s action, Lomax thanked him for traveling far to meetJapan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

153

him and said, “It is extremely rare for a victim of war like myself to be able to receive thiskind of guest. I am very happy that you came.”

Komai Osamu visiting Eric Lomax who was tortured by his father’s order

Lester Tenney visited Japan in spring 2008 and shared his POW experience with many
young people there. He also asked the Japanese government and companies toacknowledge their abuse of POWs during World War II, apologize for it, and offer areconciliation project such as inviting former POWs and their families to Japan.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the last revision of the Geneva Convention Relative
to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. It is also the United Nation’s Year of International
Reconciliation. It is hoped that it will be a year for Japan to find a moral voice. Japan can doso by facing the past squarely, achieving reconciliation with former victims, and winning
the trust of the International community.
Kinue Tokudome is Executive Director of the US-Japan Dialogue on POWs.
The following recent related texts explore issues of war crimes, atrocities, historicalmemory, apology and compensation, offering Japanese and American archival
documentation and comparative perspectives on the legal and humanitarian issues atstake.
Notes
1 Holder video here.
2 Details of the development of the Bush administration’s policy on waterboarding are here.

Tokudome: Waterboarding: The Meaning in Japan154

See “Waterboarding Historically Controversial” The Washington Post, Oct, 5, 2006. Page
A17.
3

4 Congressional Record, Senate, November 8, 2007, p.S. 14166.
5 “McCain Looks Ahead,” CBS 60 Minutes, March 9, 2008. McCain’s live comments onwaterboarding are here.

6 Washington Post, "Waterboarding Used to Be a Crime"
7 Here8 Gustavo Ingles, Memoirs of Pain (Metro Manila: Mauban Heritage Foundation, 1992), p.27.
9 Lester I. Tenney, My Hitch in Hell (Washington: Brassey’s, 1995), pp. 87-88.
10 See for example, “Water Cure: Debating torture and counterinsurgency- a century ago”

by Paul Kramer, New Yorker, February 25, 2008. Kramer chronicled the debate on
American soldiers’ torturing Filipinos with water during the Philippines-American War. He
concluded that although some Americans at that time were outraged by the “cruelty” and“barbarities” exhibited by US soldiers, in the end the nation as a whole chose not to deal
with it squarely. Kramer’s thoughts on the relevance of this century old debate on “watercure” to today’s situation can be found at Japan Focus
11 For Prime Minister Aso’s admission see Japanese PM Taro Aso's family business used

British PoWs. Prime Minister Aso also admitted that there were Korean workers at Aso
Mining during the Upper House plenary session on Jan. 7, 2009.
12 Foreign Minister Nakasone Hirofumi before the Upper House Committee on Foreign

Affairs and Defense, Dec. 18, 2008.

13 Former Australian POW Arthur Gigger who was forced to work at Aso Mining said thatfood and clothes were inadequate. (See “Proof of POW Forced Labor for Japan’s Foreign
Minister: The Aso Mines” by William Underwood.) Another former POW Joe Coombs
recently told the Radio Australia about the condition of the Aso Mining, “The coal mines
were the worst of the lot, I'm sure the mines that we were working in were old mines that
had been re-opened. And the coal that we were taking out should have been left there to
hold the mine together and we had several major falls while we were working there."
14 See “The Japanese Court, Mitsubishi and Corporate Resistance to Chinese Forced Labor

Redress” by William Underwood for the account of Japanese corporations’ resistance todealing with the forced labor issue.

15 See Michael Bazyler’s forthcoming article at Japan Focus for discussion of many issues

relevant to the present article.

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What do Afghan citizens think of Japan’s presence in Afghanistan? C. Douglas Lummis
introduces the voices of Afghani members of Afghan Peace Volunteers (APV), who fearthat their country will endure “never-ending U.S. military occupation against the will of thepeople,” that is, become “An Afghan Okinawa.” The peace volunteers question the meaningof “enduring”—as in “Operation Enduring Freedom,” asking if this really means that
Americans will “endure,” meaning that they keep their presence there in the form of U.S.
bases. They point to the example of Okinawa, where U.S. bases established in 1945
“endure” to this day despite the opposition of essentially all Okinawans.
An Afghan Okinawa
C. Douglas Lummis with Afghan Peace Volunteers
May 26, 2012
http://apjjf.org/2012/10/22/C.-Douglas-Lummis/3758/article.html
A Japanese translation of the Afghan Peace Volunteers text is available here.
Reading this beautifully written appeal from the Afghan Peace Volunteers is like hearing,amid the drums and trumpets of war, the delicate sound of a flute. What is heartbreaking
about the Afghan struggle is that none of the main contenders we hear about – the Karzai
government, the U.S. military, NATO, the Taliban, al Qaeda – seems capable of hearing thatsound. An eye for an eye, said Gandhi, and the whole world goes blind. A bomb for a bomb, it
could be added, and the world goes deaf as well – in particular, deaf to the sound of peace. It isheartening, and a source of hope, to hear that sound coming from Afghanistan, despite
everything.
As one who lives in Okinawa, I find it fascinating that these young people (they seem to be agroup mostly of college students) have chosen Okinawa as exemplifying the situation theywant to avoid. The differences are great, but on the point they want to emphasize – neverending U.S. military occupation against the will of the people – the comparison is fair enough.
It is sad to learn that Okinawa’s situation has become so notorious as to serve as a negative
example to the long-suffering people of Afghanistan. On the other hand, it is encouraging toremember that it is because of the stubborn protest and resistance of the Okinawan people
that their situation has become known around the world. And the Peace Volunteers are right:
it indeed was Okinawan resistance to the joint U.S.-Japanese government plan to build a newbase on Okinawa that cost Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama his job. And – watch carefully –Okinawan resistance may bring down the present P.M. as well. The sound of the flute of peace
may be soft, but it can generate real power.
So the Peace Volunteers are also right in hinting that, rather than the drums and trumpets ofwar, it might be the music of peace that brings down the Karzai government and drives the
U.S. military from their country. Their manifesto comes at a time when NATO and the U.S.
trumpet their announcement of the withdrawal of NATO combat forces in 2014 while
continuing to plan for permanent occupation of a nation that they have left in ruins. I hopethat our printing their appeal in the Asia-Pacific Journal makes a small contribution towardthat end.
C. Douglas Lummis

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There will be no U.S. troop withdrawal in2014
We are ordinary Afghans wishing for peace,
and we have eyes and ears and feelings oflove and despair, so please read on.
The Washington Post, in reporting the recent
signing of the "U.S. Afghan Enduring StrategicPartnership Agreement", stated that "U.S.
trainers and Special Operations troops thatremain beyond 2014 will live on Afghan bases.”
U.S. citizens should understand that there will not be a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops
in 2014, whether Obama or Romney wins. As Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune wrote
in ‘Every President is a war President’, "There is no Democratic or Republican Party. Thereis only the war party.”
It is the same in Afghanistan.
Building a global guns-and-graves culture?
Sadly, all of the world’s Presidents and Prime Ministers today are Commander-in-CEOs thatwage geopolitical and economic wars against their own and other people, leveraging hard,
militarized money and power.
People in many places are protesting to change this status quo, no longer content with
political lies at the people’s expense. Could this be the beautiful birth of our Human Spring?
We've always known the flowering of that spring will take time.
Andrew Exum, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, criticized Obamafor implying that the war was winding down. "I think it is misleading to say we are winding
down the war," Exum said. "The war does not stop and start according to our desires, and it
will not stop for the Afghans. It will also not stop for the many U.S. special operations forcesthat will continue to fight by, with, and through the Afghans."
In the fortified but chronically battle-ravaged capital city of Kabul, the only city in
Afghanistan where, backed by the U.S. military, Hamid Karzai actually governs, 16-year-old
Ali was disappointed that a seemingly fearful Obama, arriving by night, sneaked into theunlit city with its overflowing sewage and vanishing water table to sign the "Enduring
Strategic Partnership" agreement. Ali awoke that May 1st morning and got news of thedeal. "What?” he asked. “They couldn’t even honorably face the people they seek to rule!"
In the Enduring Strategic Partnership
Agreement, under point six of Section III
which is entitled Advanced Long-Term
Security, we read that “Afghanistan shallprovide U.S. personnel continued access toand use of Afghan facilities through 2014, andbeyond as may be agreed in the Bilateral
Security Agreement, for the purposes ofcombating al-Qaeda and its affiliates, training
Obama meets Karzai in Kabul
the Afghan Security Forces and otherJapan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

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mutually determined missions to advance shared security interests."
Instead of plans to withdraw all U.S. troops, the '….continued access to and use of Afghan
facilities through 2014, and beyond…' are plans to establish an 'Afghan Okinawa'.
Human meaning vs. cynical semantics
The Obama administration has cleverly assuaged concerns inside the U.S. with
the nominally factual claim that the U.S. seeks ‘no permanent military bases in
Afghanistan’.
This Orwellian play with words had successfully enabled President Obama to declare in a
32-page report entitled United States Activities in Libya that the Libya fight is not a war’, butjust ‘kinetic military actions,” thus allowing Obama to continue the Libyan intervention
beyond 60 days without the congressional approval required by the U.S. Constitution andthe War Powers Resolution of 1973.
‘No Libya war’? ‘No permanent military base in Afghanistan’?
The reality is that the U.S. bases will be "Afghan" bases, but housing as many as 20,000
U.S."trainers" and Special Ops forces, actually numbering more than the U.S. troops
currently stationed at the controversial Futenma airbase in Okinawa, Japan, and double
the number that will remain there after the troop withdrawal recently (andheatedly) negotiated with Japan.
Karzai should note how keeping U.S. troops at the Japanese Okinawa base has become sosocially and politically unacceptable.
President Karzai is naturally concerned about his legacy and should therefore consider the
possibility that even those Afghans who are now happy with U.S. military dollars will later
demand an end to the ‘Afghan Okinawa’ just as the dignified Japanese have. To prevent afall from grace in the history books, Karzai should also read how Japanese PM Yukio
Hatoyama had to resign over the Okinawa row, just 8 months after he had come into power.
An Afghan opposition party, the National United Front, has already stated that the StrategicPartnership Agreement will be condemned by Afghanistan’s present and future
generations.
The majority of U.S. citizens who want the war in Afghanistan to end will be disappointed
that there won’t be a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2014 after all.
There will not be a complete U.S. troop withdrawal in 2014.
Not all U.S. troops will withdraw in 2014.
There were never plans to withdraw all U.S. troops in 2014.
‘Withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2014’ is Obama's ‘war of perceptions’.
In how many ways need we say this for our U.S. friends, so that they can ask for their own
public opinion against the Afghan war to be democratically considered?

Lummis with Afghan Peace Volunteers: An Afghan in Okinawa

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Civility and brutality"We also want a functioning economy for everyone, decent livelihoods in a secureenvironment so that we can study, work and return home safely every day. U.S. Special Ops
and drones cannot do that for us," says Shams, an Afghan Peace Volunteer.
Ordinary Afghans, like ordinary Americans, want the Afghan war to end.
But there are differences which should be openly addressed as to how we want the Afghan
war to end.
Whereas both ordinary Americans and Afghans appreciate civility, their governments havebecome so militarized that they offer no civil options.
Using U.S. Special Ops and drones is a military option, an option amply proven over theAfghan centuries to have failed. It is not a civil option.
"I would rather have one unarmed American humanitarian teacher or worker in my village
than a thousand armed Taliban or American soldiers,” says Abdulhai. “I can eat bread, I
can’t eat bullets. I need ways to earn a living, not ways to kill a man."
To Abdulhai, bread, education and work is defense, genuine civil defense.
There are no physical ‘terrorist havens’ in Afghanistan, Pakistan or anywhere else in theworld that U.S. Special Ops forces can annihilate to ‘finish the job’ as Obama hascommanded them.
The ‘terrorist’ approach here is not only the military approach adopted by Al Qaeda and its
constantly sprouting affiliates, but clearly also the military approach adopted by the U.S.
government in its foreign policy aim of achieving global ‘full spectrum dominance’, as
described in the ‘Joint Vision 2020’ blue print of the U.S. Department of Defense.
Arriving superpower China, like the departed powers of Britain and Russia and the
U.S. superpower so slow in departing, can be expected to adopt the same approach of
hard, brutal force.
All of them, whether amoral philosophers, Muslim ‘jihadis’ or Augustinian ‘crusaders’, havedone little but disappoint and then kill the Afghan people, just as their traditional tactics
have betrayed and slaughtered so much of the human race.
Some may applaud Obama’s midnight approval of an Afghan Okinawa, but please respect
our humanity when we say that we don’t. We detest the epaulettes, the weapons, thesalutes, the hubris, the stealth and the Orwellian words in English and Dari that violate ouryearning for truth.
From the pre-dawn darkness of Obama’s night swoop through Kabul (all to seal a ‘new day’of perpetual war in South Asia) to the subsequent Taliban attacks on Green Village in whichchildren on the way to school were killed, we hope you’ll hear this voice.

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This voice is in you too, and it is awakening.
‘Help us with civil dignities.
Don’t applaud an Afghan Okinawa.
Withdraw your Special brutalities.
Bring ALL your troops home.’
Who We Are
We are Afghan college students and youth who started this journey in 2008.
The Afghan Peace Volunteers are a grassroots group of ordinary, multi-ethnic Afghans
seeking a life of non-violence, the unity of all people, equality, and self-reliance. We
seek non-military solutions for Afghanistan and do not work for the benefit of any politicalgroup or religion.
We envision Afghans from all ethnic groups uniting for a non-violent movement towards apeaceful life.
C. Douglas Lummis, a former US Marine stationed on Okinawa and a present resident of
Okinawa, is the author of Radical Democracy and other books in Japanese and English.

Tanter: The Maritime Self-Defence Force Mission in the Indian Ocean160

As noted above, Japanese officials have used the war to momentum toward ending its
postwar Constitutional prohibition against offensive warfare. Richard Tanter’s “TheMaritime Self-Defence Force Mission in the Indian Ocean: Afghanistan, NATO and Japan’s
Political Impasse,” shows how this has occurred through “mission creep.” Just as the JMSDF (maritime self-defense forces) were unwinding their mission in the Indian Ocean, thegovernment took steps to broaden their mission to protect sea lanes to the Middle East andstrengthen Japan’s partnership with NATO. Moreover, in 2008, Japan even consideredsending ground troops to Afghanistan and did send SDF officers there to plan Japan’s
participation in the UN’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) through actions
such as airlifting supplies, building roads and performing other construction activities.
However, due both to escalating violence there and fierce opposition in Japan, this plan wascanceled. Mission creep continued, however, when the original Indian Ocean mission
acquired a new role of combatting piracy on the high seas, using a definition that included
combatting the anti-whaling activities of environmental groups such as the Sea Shepard
and Greenpeace.
The Maritime Self-Defence Force Mission in the Indian Ocean: Afghanistan, NATO andJapan’s Political Impasse
Richard Tanter
September 1, 2008
http://apjjf.org/-Richard-Tanter/2868/article.html[Editors’ note: The final version of this article was received just prior to the announcement of
Fukuda Yasuo’s resignation as Prime Minister. Tanter comments: Fukuda’s resignation willchange nothing in the underlying domestic and alliance strains that lead to his decision to
resign. The next Liberal Democratic Party leader, whether Aso Taro, Koike Yuriko, or someone
else, will face the same limitations, and the same demands on military policy, but with evenmore diminished political resources and room for maneuvre. If the LDP moves to a generalelection following the selection of a new Prime Minister, the Democratic Party of Japan would
be under severe pressure, on the one hand, from domestic sources to make good on its
criticism of the Indian Ocean deployment, and on the other, from the United States, torecognize US understandings of Japan’s global responsibilities – and maintain the deployment- possibly as the price of power.]
Military policy is rarely an issue that wins or loses Japanese elections. Yet, for the second
time in little over a year the question of whether to extend Japan’s commitment to theAmerican-led war in Afghanistan may well decide the fate of the Japanese cabinet. A year
after Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s failure to pass legislation extending the Maritime Self
Defence Force’s mid-ocean refuelling operations in the Indian Ocean led to his resignation,
his successor, Fukuda Yasuo, is assailed by plunging personal unpopularity, rising public
opposition to the Maritime Self-Defence Force (MSDF) deployment, ongoing scandals in the
Defense Ministry, a wavering coalition partner, and by pressures to deepen Japan’scommitment to the war in Afghanistan from both his own nationalist party rivals and by
the United States.2 This latest episode of Japan’s ongoing political crisis has its roots in both

Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq161

the unresolved structural blockages of Japanese politics, with their accompanying
democratic deficits, and the contradictions of Japan’s position within the United Statesalliance system at a time of war. The resulting conjuncture pulls in opposite directions: at atime when the existing MSDF deployment is under political strain, the government has
sought to deepen the commitment to the war in Afghanistan, expand the MSDF mission toprotection of sealanes to the Middle East, and link Japan into a global military partnershipwith NATO.
The extension of the Indian Ocean mission beyond January 2009
During an extraordinary Diet session beginning in September, the government will attempt
to extend the MSDF mission by passing an extension of the Replenishment Support Special
Measures Law through both houses. The bill will likely fail in the Democratic Party ofJapan-controlled upper house, leaving Mr Fukuda the option of over-riding an upper house
rejection by passing the legislation through the lower house for a second time with a twothirds majority. There are, however, at least five problems with that scenario for Mr
Fukuda – his coalition partners, his own abysmal popularity and his party rivals, theJapanese constitution, a dysfunctional Defense Ministry, and his country’s principal ally.
The first problem for Mr Fukuda is that the Liberal Democratic Party’s coalition partner,
the Buddhist-aligned New Komeito is under pressure from its pacifist-leaning Soka Gakkai
parent to repudiate the Indian Ocean deployment. While New Komeito has managed toignore such concerns during its long coalition with the ruling party as they presided overJapan’s remilitarisation, there is some chance this time that the prospect of serious
electoral defeat under Fukuda’s leadership is concentrating their minds on the issue, if not
the principle.
Fukuda’s second problem is himself. In May, public support for his cabinet bottomed out at
20% according to a Nikkei poll, before bouncing back to 38% following a cabinet reshuffle
in early August widely thought to be his last throw of the dice.3 The reshuffle brought his
most important party rival, nationalist former foreign minister Aso Taro, back into the LDP
front rank as Secretary-General of the party. At 20%, Aso has the highest rating for the
position of next prime minister. Fukuda’s own rating for an extension as prime minister has
shuffled between 4 and 8% in recent months. For Fukuda’s colleagues,– and most likely, for
the United States - the issue of the Indian Ocean mission extension is the key test forassessing Fukuda’s future:‘“The extraordinary session would be pointless if we can't pass the refuelling bill," an LDP
official says. "If he becomes unable to even convene a Diet session, at that point the Fukuda
cabinet will hit a dead end."4
The third difficulty is one of time and timing. Due to New Komeito’s hesitations and thecabinet reshuffle, the timing of the extraordinary Diet session was pushed back from earlyAugust to late September. Under Article 59 of the Japanese Constitution, a bill cannot be
reintroduced into the House of Representatives until 60 days after the House of Councillors
has failed to take final action on it.

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According to the Nikkei 5,
After passage of the budget, the LDP intends to pass a bill to extend the temporary law toextend Japan's refuelling mission after having it clear the lower house around Oct. 20, as
the lower chamber will be able to hold a second vote after 60 days -- around Dec. 20 -- even
if the opposition parties, which control the upper chamber, refuse to vote on it.
However, the Nikkei also reported at the same time that
The New Komeito party has said that the duration of the extraordinary session should not
be decided based on the premise that the ruling bloc will resort to a second vote in theHouse of Representatives to pass an envisioned bill to extend Japan's antiterrorism
refuelling mission in the Indian Ocean.
As a result, whatever else transpires, the Fukuda administration will face serious
difficulties in passing the bill to extend the MSDF mission through the lower house a second
time with a two-thirds majority in time to continue the MSDF deployment before its
current authorisation expires on January 30, 2009.
The fourth problem is the Ministry of Defense and its ministerial and bureaucratic heads,
which it keeps losing. The undistinguished current Minister, Hayashi Yoshimasa, is the fifth
in less than two years. Of his predecessors - Kyuma Fumio, Koike Yuriko, Komura Masahiko,and Ishiba Shigeru - only Ishiba remained in the position for more than half a year. A 2007bribery scandal led to the arrest of the most senior defense bureaucrat and the closure of
the corrupt Defense Facilities Administration Agency. In March 2008, vice-ministers andmany other bureaucrats were censured and the commander of the MSDF dismissed after
further scandals and two collisions between MSDF vessels and civilian craft.6 The
continuing turmoil and aroma of scandal at the ministry will reinforce parliamentary
doubts about an extension of the MSDF mission.
Fukuda’s final problem is the United States. While Thomas Schieffer, the bellicose US
ambassador to Japan, was pleased with Fukuda’s “crash through” resolution of the MSDF
deployment crisis in January, he has been publicly harassing the Fukuda administration
over what he views as its foot-dragging on both defense spending in general and an
inadequate recognition of its responsibilities in Afghanistan: “We want contributions inother forms, not just refuelling.” 7 Schieffer has been an extraordinarily outspoken
ambassador, pushing the government and publicly hectoring the opposition. This may
reinforce the concerns of those anxious about offending the dominant ally, but equally, will
rub many concerned about Japanese autonomy the wrong way.
The 2008 MSDF deployment
The MSDF was first dispatched to the Indian Ocean in support of coalition operations

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against international terrorism in Afghanistan and the surrounding region in November
2001.8 After the expiry in November 2007 of the original legislation authorising the MSDF
mission, the Replenishment Support Special Measures Law in January 2008 passed thelower house for the second time on January 11, 2008, in order to open the way to“contributions to efforts by the international community for the prevention and eradicationof international terrorism.”9MSDF crew watch refuelling of a Pakistani ship in the Indian Ocean on October 29, 2007

Indicative of the LDP’s declining parliamentary capacities, the activities authorised by the
Replenishment Support Special Measures Law were much narrower in scope than under its
predecessor, the Anti-Terrorism Special Measures Law. Under the new law, the MSDF wasonly authorised to engage in refuelling and water supply, with the previous law’s searchand rescue and relief operations authorisations having been removed.10
After a four month hiatus as a result of the political crisis, the 13,500 ton fleet support
vessel Oumi, accompanied by the destroyer Murasame, resumed MSDF refuelling of allied
vessels on February 21. These two ships made up the first rotation dispatched in late
January, 11 with subsequent rotations dispatched in April and July. 12
In June 2008 the Ministry of Defense released a map providing limited details of the areasof the MSDF refuelling operations. 13 Three operational areas covering the greater part of
the western Indian Ocean were indicated:• southern Arabian Sea, off the coast of Oman and Yemen• Gulf of Aden, off the coast of Yemen• Gulf of Oman, off the coasts of Oman, Pakistan and Iran.

Tanter: The Maritime Self-Defence Force Mission in the Indian Ocean

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Indian Ocean map

Towards new Self Defense Force missions
With the re-authorisation of the MSDF mission, albeit somewhat constrained compared toits predecessor, accomplished by parliamentary force majeure in January, the government
turned to the longer-term question of expanding the country’s military involvement in
Afghanistan and the Middle East. Two options emerged: committing ground and air
elements of the SDF to the war in Afghanistan proper, and, when that possibility appeared
unlikely to succeed, deploying MSDF destroyers and surveillance aircraft to protect
Japanese tankers from pirate attacks on the route from Middle Eastern oil terminals.

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Japan oil tanker Takenaka was attacked off the coast of Yemen in April 2008

On May 30, the Chief Cabinet Secretary said that the government was seeking ways of bothmaintaining the MSDF Indian Ocean mission and widening its military involvement in
Afghanistan. The following day, June 1, the Prime Minister told reporters that the
government was considering sending ground troops to Afghanistan:"If conditions on the (Afghan) ground allow, Japan can offer its cooperation in activities on
the ground. I'm always thinking of that possibility. My attitude is that we should do what
we can do."14
In preparation for this expansion, the government sent a team of Foreign and Defense
Ministry officials, accompanied by Self Defence Force officers to Afghanistan to plan an SDF
mission to Afghanistan under International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) auspices.
According to newspaper reports, possible missions included airlifting of supplies with CH47 helicopters and CH-130 transports, road-building, and other construction activities. 15 It
was assumed that the government would once again attempt to justify an expanded SDF
commitment on the ground in Afghanistan as an anti-terrorism deployment to avoid legal
restrictions on collective defense.
However, the combat reality of the widening war, the spectre of coalition defeat, andincreased Japanese public resistance to an expanded commitment combined to thwart
these plans. A month later, a senior LDP official announced the abandonment of the plan, atleast for the moment, since “there is no strong support by the people”, while the juniorcoalition partner, New Komeito, expressed deep reservations. 16
PiracyYet while attempts to deploy SDF ground and air elements to Afghanistan were put to one
side, a widely reported spate of pirate attacks on Japanese shipping in the Middle East andSoutheast Asia was used as a rationale for two quite different Indian Ocean missions: using

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MSDF destroyers and surveillance aircraft to escort Japanese tankers from the Middle East
to Japan, and deploying MSDF destroyers and surveillance aircraft to the Horn of Africa toparticipate in coalition anti-piracy activities.
The idea of an MSDF mission to protect sea-lanes in the Middle East and Southeast Asia –and that of sea lines of communication (SLOCs) in general - has been a long-running themeof Japanese post-war defense debate.17 The Ministry of Defense policy research arm, theNational Institute of Defense Studies (NIDS), has advocated both closer cooperation withlittoral states and the development of a multilateral Ocean Peace-Keeping force (OPK). In
fact, both the MSDF and the substantial armed Japan Coast Guard have developed a regularpresence at both ends of the Straits of Malacca through a year-round cycle of training andcooperation with India, Singapore and Malaysia in particular.18
There were ten reported significant piracy incidents involving Japanese ships in 2007. 19 In
the past year attacks on major Japanese vessels in the Gulf of Aden in particular haveincreased in number and severity, with large commercial Japanese ships apparently
targeted for ransom and theft possibilities. Although there are important variations in what
is counted as a piracy incident, there is little doubt that major vessels steaming off theSomali and Yemeni coast face quite real threats of attack, hijacking, and murder.20 In
October 2007, the 11,000 tonne Japanese chemical tanker Golden Nori was hijacked for
ransom. 21 In April 2008, the 150,000 tonne Nippon Yusen tanker Takayama was attacked
by what the Japanese government described as “a small pirate ship with weapons likerocket launchers" in international waters some 440 kilometres east of Aden. 22 In its
weekly maritime safety report the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency summarized
the attack on the Takayama as follows:“VLCC [Very Large Crude Carrier] tanker (TAKAYAMA) fired upon 21 Apr 08 at 0110 UTC(reported by IMB), 0230 UTC (reported by operator), while underway in position 13:00N049:07E, approximately 240NM east of Port of Aden, Yemen. Five speedboats chased andopened fire at the vessel, in ballast, proceeding to Yanbo, Saudi Arabia. The vesselincreased its speed and enforced anti-piracy preventative measures. A rocket was shot atthe vessel, damaging its hull. Crewmembers on board have confirmed the existence of a 20millimeter hole on the port side near the stern of the ship. The master sent out a radio
distress call and was received by the German warship (EMDEN) who headed straight to thescene with a helicopter to intercept the pirates. By the time the helicopter arrived, thepirates had fled in their speedboats. Yemeni coast guard forces also claimed a role inhelping.” 23
For the Japanese security establishment, these attacks amounted to a major security threat
justifying a military response. Minister of Defense Hayashi Yoshimasa quoted the piracy
threat to Japanese oil tankers as something that is included in “the fight against terror”, andsaid that his staff was considering whether the extension of the Replenishment Support
Special Measures Law should include measures such as destroyer escorts for Japanesetankers in areas of danger should be proposed as a new element in the bill. 24 Aso Taroproposed having MSDF destroyers escort tankers carrying oil from the Middle East to Japan

Japan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

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– some 90 of which are at sea at any one time plying the route to regional oil terminals.25
The Yomiuri and LDP supporters of the proposal pointed out the legal limitations on both
Japan Coast Guard and MSDF actions to support vessels under criminal attack, or even for
the MSDF to escort non-Japanese-registered vessels. The Yomiuri and LDP supporters of
the proposal pointed out that such legislation could overcome the longstanding domestic
legal limitations on both Japan Coast Guard and MSDF actions to support vessels undercriminal attack, or even for the MSDF to escort non-Japanese-registered vessels).26
Supporters of the proposal pointed to Security Council Resolution 1816 (2008), passed
unanimously on 2 June with the acquiescence of the Transitional Federal Government ofSomalia, under which, for the following six months, member states may(a) Enter the territorial waters of Somalia for the purpose of repressing acts of piracy andarmed robbery at sea, in a manner consistent with such action permitted on the high seaswith respect to piracy under relevant international law; and(b) Use, within the territorial waters of Somalia, in a manner consistent with action
permitted on the high seas with respect to piracy under relevant international law, allnecessary means to repress acts of piracy and armed robbery;

Reported hijackings off Somalia

Following on from the Security Council resolution, the United States Naval Central
Command established a Maritime Security Patrol Area in the Gulf of Aden in mid-August.
The MSPA is patrolled by ships and aircraft from the Djibouti-based multinational coalition
Combined Task Force 150 (CTF-150).27

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Operations by Combined Task Force 150 (CTF-150, a multinational coalition naval force
headquartered at Djibouti since 2002) have helped quell terrorist activity in the Red andArabian Seas. The CTF-150 flotilla patrols from the Red Sea to the Gulf of Oman andcomprises 14-15 vessels. A native Arab speaker accompanies CTF-150 boarding teams totalk with boat crews before intelligence is passed to the US Navy regional command centerin Bahrain.28
Presumably, to be at all effective these MSDF elements would be made part of CTF-150. The
Yomiuri reported that the MSDF Staff Office had begun preparations for legislative changeon the basis of dispatching two more destroyers to the Indian Ocean and sending two or
more of its 110 MSDF P-3C surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft to be based in Djibouti
or Aden, together with up to 200 support personnel.29
However, while the threat to shipping from pirates off Somalia and Yemen is serious andurgent both for those aboard ships passing through the region and their owners andinsurers, there are doubts about whether the attacks should be regard as a serious military
threat or just an irritant – especially given the small number of attacks compared with thehuge volume of traffic. In turn, it is doubtful whether a purely – or even largely – militaryresponse is either appropriate or effective. Certainly multilateral cooperation forprotection of ships and their crews and cargoes is a key step, especially in a region where
the capacity of littoral states to regulate their waters is limited, to say the least. But as the
Director of the International Maritime Bureau, Pottengal Mukundan, put it:“Whilst the intervention of coalition navies has helped in isolated cases, it is by no means along-term solution. It is clear that the threat or presence of coalition navies has done little
to stem the tide of attacks in this region.”30
This perhaps surprising conclusion by a representative of the global shipping industry is inpart due to doubt that military or police actions will address what are now reasonably wellunderstood root causes of the rise of piracy – both in the form of sophisticated criminalgroups operating in transnational networks and more simple opportunistic “sea-robbers”.
Carolin Liss argues that in the Southeast Asian case the causes of the sudden eruption of
attacks from both must shape the policy response:
Lax maritime rules and regulations, poverty, the impact of ecological degradation and overfishing, and the existence of organised crime groups and radical politically motivatedorganisations in the region are conducive to the occurrence of pirate attacks in Southeast
Asia and shape the nature of such attacks. In order to be successful, responses to piracy
have to address most, if not all, of these problems and issues. Combating piracy isconsequently a difficult and complex task, requiring more than the patrolling of piracyprone waters.31
Each of these factors Liss presents as shaping the Southeast Asian piracy environment areJapan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

169

also present in the Horn of Africa with a vengeance, compounded by the political chaos of
the region, especially in Somalia itself. The proposed Japanese response follows the paththat, as Liss argues, has not been successful elsewhere.
More than just continuous military force and/or operations by law enforcement agencies
are needed to successfully combat organised crime and to ‘pacify’ and integrate areas inwhich separatists, guerrillas, or terrorists operate. In fact, it is crucial to address the root
causes of such violence, which include poverty, the marginalisation of certain geographic
areas or ethnic groups, and government efforts in the form of military violence thatexacerbate, rather than solve, existing problems and tensions.32
In such circumstances, not only would piracy appear to be a pretext for attempting to
implement long-running plans to extend the mission of the MSDF and the Japan Coast
Guard, but it would almost certainly result in an ineffective policy, especially given thestate-destroying consequences of US policy towards Somalia.
Whaling protest as piracy?
Moreover, the suspicion that reports of piracy may be providing a much longed for pretext
for MSDF mission creep are confirmed by another aspect of the planned legislative changes.
According to newspaper reports on Japanese government intentions in proposing such“anti-piracy legislation”, it is clear that targets other than sophisticated armed criminal
gangs in the Horn of Africa are also on the mind of the Japanese government. The Yomiurireported that the government’s definition of actions to be considered criminal under theextension of the Replenishment Support Special Measures Law will at least in part target
environmental activist groups such as Sea Shepherd or Greenpeace that have interferedwith Japanese “scientific” whaling in the Antarctic:
The envisaged legislation, however, likely will enable authorities to arrest the captain of avessel concerned, even if those who have carried out illegal activities are not identified.33
This came several days after Chief Cabinet Secretary Machimura Nobutaka announced thatJapanese prosecutors will seek international arrest warrants through Interpol for three Sea
Shepherd members for their activities against Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean in
2007.34

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Japanese whaler Yushin Maru watched by Sea Shepherd members in a speedboat

In fact, the proposed anti-piracy rationale for an extended MSDF mission is a matter ofpolicy on the run, aimed less at contributing to a solution to a serious international criminal
problem in which Japan certainly has an interest than at diverting public opinion
increasingly hostile to the Indian Ocean mission, keeping open the door to future
participation in the ground war in Afghanistan, and along the way providing a domestic
legal basis for criminalizing opposition to scientific whaling in international waters. The
Yomiuri strongly supported the tanker escort proposal, but even it described the plan as“nothing more than a makeshift measure that is a product of domestic politicalcircumstances.”35
Afghanistan, NATO and deepening militarisation of foreign policy
There is however, a wider and more serious context to the attempts to extend and widen
the SDF mission in the Indian Ocean and Afghanistan. The American-led war in Afghanistan– or as it is more correctly termed by the most authoritative strategic analyst of the war,
Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the AfghanistanPakistan War36 – has reached a near-terminal point. Whoever wins the US presidential
election, US troops will be shifted from Iraq to the Afghanistan theater, but with neither aserious chance of reversing the collapse of support for the Karzai government in Kabul nor
limiting the expansion of the war into Pakistan.
Apart from applying pressure on allied countries to increase and deepen their militarycommitments in Afghanistan, the United States has come to emphasize the role of NATO in
the Afghanistan conflict – though somewhat belatedly. Two awkwardly coordinatedcoalition military-political deployments are in place in Afghanistan. US forces have been
engaged in “Operation Enduring Freedom” since November 2001, and are coordinatedprimarily through US Central command. At the same time, the International Security
Assistance Force, coordinated by NATO, has had responsibility for security in much of thecountry since 2006. This assumption of responsibility for security in most of Afghanistan
by NATO has a two-fold purpose: relieving the US burden, and providing a rationale forJapan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

171

NATO after the end of the Cold War.
Countries like Japan, Korea, Australia and New Zealand have been targeted by NATO as“Contact Countries” with which it intends to build partnership arrangements.37 New
Zealand, Australia and Korea all have (or have had) substantial troop deployments in
Afghanistan under ISAF/NATO auspices. A key goal of both US and Japanese government
supporters of deeper Japanese militarisation of foreign policy is to link Japan in a close
partnership with NATO, and thereby to provide one arm of an incipient global military
alliance. “High-level policy dialogues” under former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo andcontinuing under Mr Fukuda have led to the appointment of a Japanese liaison officer to the
Office of the NATO Senior Civilian Representative in Kabul, an agreement for civil aid
cooperation with NATO/ISAF Provincial Reconstruction Teams, and SDF/MOD
participation in NATO exercises and dialogues.38
Even without Ground Self Defense Force deployments to Afghanistan, for NATO and theUnited States, these small institutional moves amount to substantial progress in the projectof globalising NATO and rescuing the organisation from the threat of widely perceived
anachronism after the Cold War. Yet with the real possibility of coalition defeat in
Afghanistan, US pressure on the Fukuda administration and its successors to “shoulder its
responsibilities” and clear away political and legal obstacles to full participation in the
widening war will be unrelenting. The twin sources of Japanese remilitarisation in the
Heisei era – US pressure and the preferences of those streams of elite Japanese political andbureaucratic opinion favouring nationalist and great power solutions to foreign policy
problems – remain ascendant, despite occasional blockages.39 One of those blockages has
led to the need to try to redefine the Indian Ocean MSDF mission in terms of an anti-piracy
initiative. As a contribution to solving the problem of piracy in Somalian waters, this isclearly a rushed, ill-conceived policy, the real aims of which are to find new justifications
for continuing the expansion of the most advanced naval force in Northeast Asia, and along
the way, increasing the resources of the nationalist whaling agenda . Both are likely to behighly counter-productive. Both are deeply anachronistic responses to the real threats
faced by Japan.
Richard Tanter is Senior Research Associate at Nautilus Institute for Security andSustainability, Director of the Nautilus Institute at RMIT and a Japan Focus associate. He has
written widely on Japanese and Indonesia security policy, including 'With Eyes Wide Shut:Japan, Heisei Militarization and the Bush Doctrine' in Melvin Gurtov and Peter Van Ness(eds.), Confronting the Bush Doctrine: Critical Views from the Asia-Pacific. His most recent
book, co-edited with Gerry Van Klinken and Desmond Ball, is Masters of Terror: Indonesia's
Military and Violence in East Timor in 1999 [second edition].
Notes
1 The author thanks Arabella Imhoff and Mark Selden for a close reading of an earlier

version of this paper.
2 Richard Tanter, The End of Alliance “Business as Usual”? Ozawa’s Rejection of Japan’s
Indian Ocean Deployment, Japan Focus, 899, 12 August 2007.

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3 Fukuda gov't's public support rating rises to 38% after cabinet reshuffle, NikkeiNet,

August 11, 2008.
4 Fukuda, Playing Last Card, Stakes Coalition Unity On Reshuffling, NikkeiNet, 1 August
2008.
5 Extra Diet Session To Be Held For 70 Days From Sept 12: LDP's Aso, NikkeiNet, August 25,
2008.
6 Ishiba Sacks MSDF Chief, Punishes 80 Over Collision, Scandals, NikkeiNet, 21 March 2008.
7 麻生幹事長に新テロ法延長要請、 産経新聞、２００８年 8 月 21 日
8 Richard Tanter, Japan’s Indian Ocean Naval Deployment: Blue water militarization in a“normal country”, Japan Focus, 541, 29 March 2006.
9 “The previous Anti-Terrorism Special Measures Law was enacted in November 2005. The
period of the law was limited to two years at the time of its enactment, and after this period
had been extended three times (October 2003: extended by two years: October 2005:
extended by one year; October 2006: extended by one year), the law became invalid on
November 1, 2007.” The Fight against Terrorism: Self-Defense Force Activities, Ministry of
Defense, June 2008.
10 “The purpose of the Law is to continue active contributions to efforts by the international
community for the prevention and eradication of international terrorism, and thereby
contribute to ensuring peace and security of the international community including Japan,
through activities related to the provision of supplies and services of the Self-Defense
Forces of Japan(limited to activities that provide fuel for vessels or rotary wing aircraft carried on vessels
and water) to vessels of the armed forces or other similar entities of foreign countries
which are engaged in duties related to activities that contribute to the achievement of the
purposes of the Charter of the United Nations by making efforts to eradicate the threatcaused by the terrorist attacks in the United States of America on September 11, 2001, andto take such necessary measures as the inspection and verification of vessels sailing theIndian Ocean with a view to interdicting and deterring the movements of terrorists,
weapons or other material under international cooperation (hereinafter referred to as"counter-terrorism maritime interdiction activities"), in order to assist in the smooth andeffective implementation of counterterrorism maritime interdiction activities. Japanese
Note: Exchange of Notes concerning Supplies and Services Contributed to the Armed
Forces or Other Similar Entities of New Zealand, under the Replenishment Support Special
Measures Law (April 2008), Ministry of Foreign of Affairs, Japan.
11 Resumption of Refuelling Operations, Ministry of Defense, February 21, 2008.
12 For rotation details see 自衛隊インド洋派遣、 『ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』[accessed 30 August 2008]
13 The Fight against Terrorism: Self-Defense Force Activities, Ministry of Defense
June 2008.
14 Japan may send troops to Afghanistan: PM, AFP, 1 June 2008.
15 Team off to assess SDF Afghan role, Kyodo, Japan Times, June 10, 2008.
16 Japan Forgoes Sending SDF To Afghanistan For Worsening Security, NikkeiNet, July 18,
2008. But in late August the Sankei Shinbun reported that the Defense Ministry would
include a 26.9 billion yen FY2009 budget request for 4 extra CH-47 helicopters with extraJapan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

armour-plating required for Afghanistan combat conditions. See 防衛省概算要求
７ヘリ追加購入 アフガン派遣視野

173

ＣＨ４

整備費用も盛る」、 産経新聞、２００８年 8 月

26 日
17 Euan Graham, Japan's Sea Lane Security: A Matter of Life and Death (Nissan InstituteRoutledge, 2006.
18 The JCG’s 6,500 tonne Shikishima patrol vessel – effectively a frigate – ecorts Japanese
reprocessed plutonium from Britain and France back to Japan several times a year. The“lightly armed” Shikishima is equipped with two twin 35 mm. cannon and a Vulcan M-61
“gatling” gun, whose six barrels fire about 100 rounds per second.
19 ２００７年の日本関係船舶における海賊等事案の状況及び世界における海賊等事案の状況について 、 海事局外航課、国土交通省
20 Updates on piracy incidents are available at Worldwide Threats to Shipping Reports,
Office of Naval Intelligence, Civil Maritime Analysis Department.
See also Ocean Policy Research Foundation, OPRF MARINT Monthly Report, June 2008.
Because most Japanese-related vessels are in fact registered under flags of convenience, it
is possible that numbers of attacks on Japanese-related vessels are under-reported. See
Graham, op.cit.
21 “US and German naval vessels shadowed the captured vessel and blockaded it fromentering the port of Bosaso. Eventually, after demanding a ransom, the pirates freed theship and its crew of 21 on December 12.” Golden Nori, Wikipedia.
22 Pirates attack Japanese tanker near Yemen, AFP, 21 April 2008.
23 Office of Naval Intelligence, Civil Maritime Analysis Department, Worldwide Threat To
Shipping Mariner Warning Information, 7 May 2008.
See also ‘They opened fire with machine guns and rockets', Johan Lillkung, The
Observer, 27 April 2008. Pirates fail to hijack Japanese ship off Somalia, USA Today, 23
August 2008.
24 大臣会見概要、防衛賞、平成 20 年 8 月 22 日。
http://www.mod.go.jp/j/kisha/2008/08/22.html
25 The Fight against Terrorism: Self-Defense Force Activities, Ministry of Defense, June
2008.
26 Editorial: Antipiracy Legislation Badly Needed, Yomiuri Shinbun, 19 August 2008.
27 Maritime Security Patrol Area to be Established, Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Central
Command Public Affairs, 22 August 2008; and Combined Task Force 150, Wikipedia.
28 Terrorism and Piracy: The Dual Threat to Maritime Shipping, John C. K. Daly, Volume 6,
Issue 16 (August 11, 2008).
29 Editorial: Antipiracy Legislation Badly Needed, Yomiuri Shinbun, 19 August 2008.
30 Office of Naval Intelligence, Civil Maritime Analysis Department, Worldwide Threat To
Shipping Mariner Warning Information, 20 August 2008.
31 Carolin Liss, The roots of piracy in Southeast Asia, Nautilus Institute, Austral Policy
Forum 07-18A, 22 October 2007.
32 Carolin Liss, The Challenges of Piracy in Southeast Asia and the Role of Australia,
Nautilus Institute, Austral Policy Forum 07-19A, 25 October 2007.
See also Mark Valencia, “Piracy and Politics”, in Derek Johnson and Mark J. Valencia, Piracy

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in Southeast Asia: Status, Issues, and Responses, International Institute for Asian Studies,
Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2005; and The Maritime Dimension of International
Security: Terrorism, Piracy, and Challenges for the United States, Peter Chalk, RAND, 2008.
Maritime Security and Piracy, Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies provides auseful guide.
33 Govt considers antipiracy legislation, Yomiuri Shimbun, 24 August 2008.
Targeted actions reportedly include “illegal violent activities, detention and pillage
involving vessels at sea and aircraft by crew members and passengers aboard privately
owned vessels and airplanes; volunteering to help run pirate ships and aircraft; agitation
involving such activities”.
34 Japan seeks international arrest of anti-whaling activists, AFP, 17 August 2008; and捕鯨船妨害容疑、米英３人に逮捕状 警視庁、国際手配へ、朝日、2008 年 8 月 18日。http://www.asahi.com/national/update/0818/TKY200808180042.html“In February 2007, the anti-whaling group's boat and a Japanese whaling vessel collided
twice in Antarctic waters during clashes near a pod of whales. Around the same time, Sea
Shepherd activists also dumped a foul-smelling acid made from rancid butter on anotherwhaling ship, slightly injuring two crew members and prompting Japanese officials to label
them "terrorists." Japan to arrest 3 anti-whaling activists, Associated Press, International
Herald Tribune, 18 August 2008.
35 Editorial: Antipiracy Legislation Badly Needed, Yomiuri Shinbun, 19 August 2008.
36 Anthony Cordesman, Analyzing the Afghanistan-Pakistan War, CSIS, 29 July 2008.
37 NATO looks to global partnerships, NATO Update, 27 April 2008 and Australia and NATO,
Australia in Afghanistan, Nautilus Institute.
38 NATO Secretary General meets the Japanese Prime Minister, NATO Press Release,(2007)140, 13 December 2007.
39 'With Eyes Wide Shut: Japan, Heisei Militarization and the Bush Doctrine' in Melvin
Gurtov and Peter Van Ness (eds.), Confronting the Bush Doctrine: Critical Views from theAsia-PacificJapan’s Participation in the American Led-Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

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Responsibility and Remembrance
Finally, what might follow from Japan’s participation in the U.S.-led wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq? As Michael Penn observes, the newspaper Asahi Shimbun was oneof the few media organizations continuously asking tough questions of Japan and America
in the lead-up to the flawed intervention in Iraq. In “Japan On the Fifth Anniversary of
the Iraq War,” Penn introduces Asahi reporter Sato Taketsugu’s commentary that Japanneeds to re-evaluate its decision to send troops to Iraq before engaging in any morepermanent SDF missions. Japanese leaders initially went along with America’s rationalethat Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction because, like other membersof the “coalition of the willing,” they wanted to support the U.S.-Japan alliance. But Japan“certainly bears a part of the blame for supporting this war,” given that there were no
WMDs. Sato argues that Japan should reflect on that error as well as seek cooperation witha wider range of the international community to combat terror. Penn offers hiscommentary next to Sato’s, written after the Japanese withdrawal from Iraq, noting that
Iraqis held mostly positive impressions of Japan’s activities there. However, citing
several examples of mismanagement of funds and the lack of a long-term meaningfulcommitment to Iraq, he concludes that the SDF mission, like Japan’s Iraq policy generally,might have been “hollow at the core.”
Japan On the Fifth Anniversary of the Iraq War
Michael Penn and the Asahi Shinbun
March 3, 2008
http://apjjf.org/-Michael-Penn-Asahi/2705/article.html
We have recently crossed the five-year mark since the American invasion of Iraq. President
George W. Bush used the occasion to triumphantly declare that, due to his decision to invade,'the world is better, and the United States of America is safer.'
In Japan, the Asahi Shinbun appears virtually alone in using this occasion to reflect upon the
Iraq War. For all its pro-war cheerleading, the Yomiuri Shinbun did not even see fit to produce
an English-language editorial on the subject. The Foreign Ministry offered no statement either.
Iraq shattered and dying? Hmm, that's too bad -- just so long as it doesn't die on the streets ofTokyo.
Among the political parties, only the Japan Communist Party seems to have marked theanniversary on their webpage. They also called for a small demonstration in the capital.
When a reporter asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs press secretary to comment, he simply
talked about the great political progress made in Iraq balanced against a toughhumanitarian situation. He then briefly outlined the assistance that the Japanese governmentPenn and Asahi Shinbun: Japan on the Fifth Anniversary of the Iraq War176

has been giving to Iraq. Business as usual.
If Japan appears unwilling to accept responsibility for the horrors it helped unleash in Iraq,
the honorable exception is the Asahi Shinbun. Much maligned by their enemies, at least there
are a few voices left in Japan that show a little reflection, show a little conscience.
The two English-language pieces that the Asahi published are reproduced in full here. MichaelPenn
SDF Mission to Iraq Still Not Properly EvaluatedMarch 21, 2008
Sato Taketsugu, The Asahi Shinbun
Five years ago Thursday (Japan time), U.S. bombers started pounding Iraq as part of aninvasion force intended to topple Saddam Hussein, an action that would eventually embroil
Japan. Yet, key questions remain unanswered over Tokyo's decision to dispatch SelfDefense Forces to the war-torn nation. Why did Japan feel so strongly that it had to support
the U.S.-led invasion by sending SDF troops? What was its significance, justification andrepercussions?
Unfortunately, the government has made no serious efforts to look into these and other key
questions by reviewing what has taken place.
The dispatch of SDF personnel to Iraq marked a radical shift in Japan's diplomacy from its
emphasis on working closely with the United Nations to putting priority on cooperatingwith the United States. Tokyo even stepped into a constitutional gray area with its decision
to put Ground SDF troops in a nation where war was being waged. The government and theruling coalition cannot afford to move ahead with proposed permanent legislation on SDF
missions overseas without first reflecting on their decision to dispatch Japanese troops toIraq.
At the outset, the government supported the U.S.-led invasion on grounds Saddam's regime
had weapons of mass destruction. When the U.S. airstrikes on Baghdad got under way inMarch 2003, then Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro told President George W. Bush that it
was 'natural' for Japan to support Washington because of the WMD issue. Koizumi told thenation that Iraq was 'not somebody else's problem.'But those weapons did not exist.
The government eventually dropped 'activities to help dispose of WMDs from a draft of a
special measures bill to support rebuilding Iraq. Bush himself later admitted that U.S.
intelligence had erred on the issue of WMDs, which at a stroke negated the justification for
the SDF dispatch.

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But the miscalculations did not stop there.
'Never did we expect the Iraq situation to sink this deep into a quagmire,' says a senior
Defense Ministry official. To tone down the 'military' colors in the special measures law, thegovernment made the dispatch of civilian personnel another pillar of Japan's rebuilding
assistance program. Four years since SDF personnel were first dispatched, the government
has still been unable to send civilians.
Tokyo deployed troops in early 2004, prodded by Washington's call for 'boots on the
ground.' The decision did not have the blessing of the United Nations. The government
argued that the dispatch did not infringe on the constitutional ban on the use of the force
because the SDF would work only in 'non-combat' areas for reconstruction assistance.
Koizumi brandished this argument in the Diet to defend the constitutionality of the mission.

SDF forces deployed to Iraq

Tokyo has since stepped up its cooperation with Washington, from missile defense to therealignment of U.S. forces. 'It shows that Japan and the United States got closer because of
the decision to send the SDF to Iraq,' says a senior Foreign Ministry official.

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SDF charm offensive in Iraq. This image appeared on Japanese water trucks

The Fukuda administration aims to enact a permanent law to enable the SDF to join a U.S.led multinational force for peace cooperation. But discussions stalled after a series ofscandals involving the Defense Ministry and the SDF, the latest being the Feb. 19 collisionof an Aegis-equipped destroyer with a fishing boat. Suspicions that the SDF fuel supplied to
U.S. vessels in the Indian Ocean may have been diverted to the Iraq war have also divided
the public on the anti-terror mission.
This article appeared in The Asahi Shinbun, March 21, 2008

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Iraq War Five Years On
March 19, 1998
The Asahi Shinbun
Five years have elapsed since the start of the Iraq war, but there are people who are stilltrying to justify this historic blunder.
President George W. Bush asserted in his State of the Union address in late January that'high-profile terrorist attacks are down.' He went on: 'The Iraqis still have a distance totravel. But after decades of dictatorship and the pain of sectarian violence, reconciliation istaking place -- and the Iraqi people are taking control of their future.'
According to figures released by the Bush administration, there have been fewer terrorist
attacks in Iraq since the 30,000-strong U.S. troop surge last spring.
But the drop in the number of the attacks is not proof that the Iraq war has turned for the
better, nor does it suggest that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was anything other than a huge
mistake. About 4,000 U.S. troops have been killed in this war. The World Heath
Organization estimates that Iraqi civilian deaths must have reached 150,000 in June lastyear. How many more have been killed since then?
'Baghdad Burning,' an English-language blog by an Iraqi girl, contains this passage: 'The
tears had stopped about an hour after we'd left Baghdad. Just seeing the dirty streets, theruins of buildings and houses, the smoke-filled horizon all helped me realize how fortunate
I was to have a chance for something safer.' This is her recollection of the day she and herfamily left Baghdad last year to seek safety in Syria.

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More than 2 million Iraqis have fled their country to become refugees. Another 2 million
Iraqis have become displaced. For these people, Bush's speech must have sounded as if itcame from another planet.

Iraq Refugees

The U.S. military resorted to a dangerous gamble to restore stability in Iraq. By providing
weapons and funds to Sunnis in anti-U.S. regions, the Americans sought to pit them against
terrorist factions affiliated with al-Qaida, the international terrorist organization headed by
Osama bin Laden. This setup helps to minimize U.S. troop casualties. It also makes attacks
against the terrorist factions more effective because they are being mounted by Iraqis who
are familiar with the situation on the ground.

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But even if the gamble pays off and temporarily restores stability, experts on Iraq are
increasingly voicing concern that those U.S.-supplied weapons will be eventually used in
sectional conflicts that will spell even more Iraqi deaths.
Iraq is not the only country where things are going south. In Afghanistan, thefundamentalist Taliban regime, toppled in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, hasregrouped, making the country unsafe again while Washington remains mired in Iraq.
Amid the turmoil in Afghanistan, the political situation in neighboring Pakistan became
volatile. Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated last December. President
Pervez Musharraf, who supported America's 'war against terror,' is now on the verge ofbeing forced out of office.
And while the Palestinian peace process grew even more uncertain, Turkish forces
attacked Kurdish communities in northern Iraq. In Iran, last week's legislative election waswon by supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hard-line anti-American
conservative, by a landslide.
The Middle East has always been a hot spot, which is all the more reason why Washington
needs to deal with this region with utmost care. But the present reality is that the situation
has effectively spun out of control since the start of the Iraq war five years ago. Anti-U.S.
sentiment is escalating throughout the Middle East.
The justification for this war, which Bush used to argue fervidly, has since evaporated
completely. Contrary to the Bush administration's insistence, the weapons of mass
destruction did not exist. And hardly anybody is talking anymore about the once-popularslogan of 'democratizing the Middle East.'Bush's popularity back home is abysmal. In other countries that sent troops to Iraq in
support of Bush's war, not a few leaders have since been driven out of power by popular
vote or due to low job approval ratings.
We believe the key reason for this disastrous state of affairs is that the United States went
after the wrong enemy. What Washington should have done was to seek the support of the
Arab-Islamic world to isolate and drive al-Qaida into a corner.
Instead, the Bush administration declared war on Saddam Hussein and his regime -- which
had nothing to do with al-Qaida -- for the most spurious of reasons. This created a rift in theinternational community and made enemies of even moderate Muslims.
Bitter feelings linger in the international community, particularly in Germany and France
that opposed the Iraq war. A good number of nations -- even those that did not send troops
to Iraq -- still participated in Bush's 'war against terror' in all sorts of ways because theyvalued their alliance with the United States. The battlefront expanded and the United
Nations was helpless to exercise its influence. Japan certainly bears a part of the blame forsupporting this war.

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There is no panacea for ending this mess. So long as a large U.S. military contingent remains
stationed in Iraq, anti-U.S. terrorism will continue. But withdrawing from Iraq before thesituation stabilizes could trigger a civil war. This is the dilemma that Washington faces.
One cause for concern is that the longer the Iraq debacle continues, the United States could
become 'worn out' not only militarily, but also economically, diplomatically, and in terms of'soft power.' The United States is still the world's sole superpower, but its leadership could
be eroded. For Japan, which has North Korea's nuclear problem to contend with, thedebilitation of its key ally is certainly not desirable.
The United States must get over its major blunder in Iraq and find a way out. We hope thepresidential debates before the November election will serve as a cue. But for that, theUnited States must first face and accept the fact that it has gone against the wrong enemy,
and think once again about where its true target lies.
The international community, too, must rebuild a system that will enable all its members towork together to contain international terror. It will not be easy, but efforts must be madeto ameliorate the growing hostility and distrust of the Arab-Islamic world toward theUnited States and the Western world.
We in Japan must think seriously what our country can do.
This article appeared in The Asahi Shinbun on March 19, 2008.

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THE LEGACY of Japan's GSDF IN SAMAWA
Michael Penn
Shingetsu Newsletter No. 957. March 30, 2008.
Kyodo News on March 29 produced a follow-up piece on GSDF reconstruction projects in
Samawa. For the entire period that the GSDF was stationed in its base near Samawa, theKoizumi Administration and its camp followers repeatedly insisted that their presence wasneeded there in order to carry out 'humanitarian and reconstruction support activities.'
It is not easy to evaluate clearly the degree to which the local community in Samawa
benefited from the GSDF activities. During the GSDF deployment itself, most news reportssuggested that a majority of the local people were pleased to have the Japanese among
them as they imagined that their presence would signal major improvements in the local
economy and because the Japanese troops didn't shoot anybody. On the other hand, there
was a minority -- apparently affiliated with the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr -- who did
not welcome the GSDF on the Iraqi nationalist grounds that they were allies of theAmerican occupiers. These people fired mortars at the GSDF base and created a sense of
threat, but never actually wounded any Japanese soldiers. The fact that the GSDF was able
to complete their 2 1/2 years in Iraq without taking any casualties can be regarded as a
success for the political supporters of the mission. They seem to have benefited from a
combination of careful planning, risk-avoiding local strategies, and simple good luck.

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Japan hired Iraqis to renovate the Samawa Secondary School for Girls and provided a mural

The total amount of money that Japan spent on Iraqi reconstruction is impressive. Tokyo
pledged US$1.5 billion in grant aid and US$3.5 billion in loans at the Madrid Conference ofOctober 2003. Since that time, MOFA has been announcing various projects on which thismoney would be spent. MOFA says that the US$1.5 billion in grants has already been
completely distributed, and that in fact an additional US$105 million in emergency grant
aid was provided to Iraq over the course of 2007 (see Shingetsu Newsletter No. 529).
Beyond all of this, Tokyo has pledged to forgive 80% of Iraq's debts from the Saddam
Husain era, which totaled about US$7.6 billion (see Shingetsu Newsletter No. 123). I'm notan economist, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the real cost of the Iraq adventure to
the Japanese taxpayer is now well over US$10 billion.
At any rate, the point of the Kyodo News report released yesterday is that for all of thisinvestment, the real improvements in Samawa may not be great. As they put it, 'there aremany examples of mismanaged support.' One of the key problems seems to be that the local
Iraqis don't have the technical training necessary to complete and operate these projects.
(In the 1980s, Iraq was one of the most sophisticated countries in the developing world inthis respect.)Muhammad Jordan, chairman of the construction committee of the al-Muthanna provincial
council, stated that 'it is strange to rely on others to rebuild your home. The Japanese didtheir best to assist the al-Muthanna people, but the problems were with those (Iraqi)
people.' Saad Rahim Salman, a manager at a large local power plant said, 'It is the first time
for the Iraqi people to embark on such a large-size project from scratch. There are no
foreign engineers... There are many holidays in Islam.'
The Kyodo News report continues by noting that 'there are precision medical devices thatcannot be used due to a lack of parts, and power generators abandoned because of thedelivery of secondhand ones.'
Some local people, like schoolteacher Salah Khlaif, supported the GSDF mission: 'The

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withdrawal was too early. I wanted Japan to stay longer.' Others, like the unemployed
Haidar Nassir, were not impressed with the help from Tokyo: 'The Japanese support hasleft only vulgar rich people and corruption behind.'
Returning to the crucial power plant project mentioned above, an engineer at the plantreferred to the fact that construction has been well behind schedule. Construction began in
April 2006 and was scheduled for completion last November. The new target is June of thisyear. The engineer explained, 'The appearance is 90% complete, but the core part is still
only 60% complete.'
Hmm. So it appears attractive on the face of it, but is hollow at the core, eh?
That's not a bad metaphor for Tokyo's entire Iraq War policy.
THE 'STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP' AND THE RECONCILIATION DIALOGUE
Did Japan Focus and the Shingetsu Newsletter change Japanese policy on Iraq? I don't know.
But since the time I wrote my critique of the concept of the 'long-term and strategic
partnership' between Japan and Iraq the slogan seems to have disappeared from MOFA
statements. Perhaps my essay caused them to reevaluate their message? Or perhaps they
have dropped the slogan for reasons entirely unrelated to my essay in Shingetsu
Newsletter No. 807? Or is the slogan still alive, but they just haven't mentioned it in the last
four months?
This past week Tokyo hosted the 'Second Seminar on National Reconciliation of Iraq.' The
program saw invitations to thirteen Iraqi MPs and others (eleven actually attended) who
were Shia, Sunni, and Kurdish. The only participant who was named in the press was
Kurdish parliamentarian Alaa al-Talabani. As the official MOFA statement put it: 'The
Seminar is held based on the consideration that the promotion of national reconciliation
among different ethnic/sectarian groups is essential for a solid stabilization of Iraq, while
the current security situation in Iraq showing signs of improvement. It is expected thatJapan's efforts of holding such Seminar would contribute to that end. During the period, thedelegation will have meetings with the Japanese Government officials as well as themembers of the Japanese parliament. The participants will also discuss among themselveson the current issues of Iraq such as Oil and Gas Law, Amendment of the Constitution andFederalism. Further, visit to Hiroshima is planned so that they can share the experiences ofJapan's post-war democratization, peace building, and reconstruction.'
However, the MOFA statement said nothing about the 'long-term and strategic partnership'
between Japan and Iraq as we might have expected on such an occasion.
A somewhat similar program occurred in February. Upon the request, apparently, of theoffice of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and the Iraqi Foreign Ministry (both offices currently
held by Kurds), MOFA and JICA offering training programs for Iraqi diplomats.

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Again, on that occasion, there was no mention of the 'long-term and strategic partnership.'It thus seems that the 'long-term' partnership may have thus lasted all of eight months.
RECENT JAPANESE AID TO IRAQ
In the past four months, most reports on Japan-Iraq relations have concerned aid programs.
The following is a round-up of both public and private aid stories:-- In late December, Tokyo donated through the UNHCR 1,000 tents for Iraqi refugees.
-- At the beginning of this year, it was announced that an unnamed Japanese signed anagreement of cooperation with Iraq's Electricity Ministry. The company was to rehabilitate
the gas-powered Taji electrical station located in northern Baghdad. Apparently, theawarding of this contract to the unnamed Japanese company was tied to a grant that Tokyo
offered to the Electricity Ministry.
-- In January, it was announced that the next round of reconstruction loans, part of the
US$3.5 billion mentioned above, would be targeted on repair of the Al-Musaib thermal
power station in suburban Baghdad, the restoration of tanker mooring facilities off Basra,
and the construction of roads and bridges near Samawa.
-- In February, the Yomiuri reported about a Yokohama-based NPO that was selling
chocolate in the run-up to St. Valentine's Day in order to raise money for medicine andclasses for Iraqi children.
-- Also in February, MOFA donated almost US$19 million through the UNDP for theestablishment of a maternity and children's hospital in Falluja. This project seems to have aclose relationship to the activities of the Hashida Memorial Mohammed Fund run by thewife of slain Japanese journalist Shinsuke Hashida.
-- In March, MOFA offered almost US$30,000 for another maternity and children's hospitalin Sadr City, Baghdad

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David McNeill, in "Secrets and Lies: Ampo, Japan’s Role in the Iraq War and theConstitution,"provides insight into efforts by Japanese citizens to investigate controversial
actions on the part of Air Self Defense Forces in Iraq. Did the Japanese troops help totransport American combat soldiers and their weapons and ammunition in and out of
declared war zones? If so, they violated the constitutional restriction to humanitarian
involvement. Using Japanese freedom of information laws, citizens have been fighting for
information on this point. McNeill is one of the few journalists in Japan to report on this
topic.
Secrets and Lies: Ampo, Japan’s Role in the Iraq War and the Constitution.
[Japanese translation available.]David McNeill
February 15, 2010
http://apjjf.org/-David-McNeill/3305/article.html
Japan marked the 50th anniversary of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty on January 19 amid
calls for an inquiry into the dispatch of Japanese Self-Defence Forces to Iraq, which critics
say was illegal and in violation of Japan’s no-war Constitution. But in contrast to the fierce
debates over the origins and legitimacy of the 2003 Iraq invasion in both the United States
and the United Kingdom, public discussion in Japan is muted and there will be no official
investigation.

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In the absence of official investigation, much of the digging around in the war’s darker
corners has been done by grassroots activists. Kondo Yuriko recalls her surprise that thestate's democratic machinery eventually produced results.

Lines of duty: ASDF members at Komaki, Aichi Prefecture, stand before an aircraft
set to take them to Iraq in December 2003. AP PHOTO
Her three-year demand for information on how the Japanese government had spentbillions of taxpayers' yen supporting a "humanitarian mission" in Iraq from January 2004
through to the end of 2008 had been partly, if belatedly, answered. And it was worth thewait.
In late September 2009 new Defense Minister Kitazawa Toshimi unexpectedly authorized
the release of a short document under the Freedom of Information Act disclosing thatabout 67 percent of the 26,000 soldiers transported by the Air Self-Defense Forces between
July 2006 and December 2008 wore U.S. uniforms. That is, the ASDF was transporting U.S.
forces into and out of combat.
In case anyone missed the point, Kondo, a 60-year-old veteran peace activist from Ogaki in
Gifu Prefecture, spelled it out: Japan's Constitution bans the SDF from participating incombat activities or transporting weapons or ammunition in a war zone. For two years, theSDF had "snubbed the law," she says, and the government concealed the illegality withblacked-out documents and a standard Defense Ministry verbal firewall to the effect that
releasing such information would "hamper operations" and "damage Japan's reputation.""It was ludicrous and illegal to have sent the SDF to Iraq," she says, alluding to Japan's socalled war-renouncing Constitution. "This document proved that."
Kondo's views found support in one landmark legal ruling. In April 2008, the Nagoya High
Court declared that the ASDF airlifting of coalition troops was unconstitutional, violating
both the (war-renouncing) Article 9 clause in the Constitution and specifically the hastily
written 2003 "Law on Special Measures for Assistance to Iraq in its Reconstruction" thatprovided the legal fig leaf for the SDF dispatch — on condition that Japanese forces would
operate only in "noncombat" areas.

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"In modern warfare, the transport of personnel and supplies constitutes a key part ofcombat," concluded Judge Aoyama Kunio. "The airlift of multinational forces to Baghdad . . .
plays a part in the use of force by other countries."
The then Liberal Democratic Party-led government disagreed, indeed, it declared the ruling
to be a victory because it rejected compensation claims by the 1,100 plaintiffs in the group
action ruled on at Nagoya High Court.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Machimura Nobutaka shrugged off accusations of illegality,
quixotically arguing that Baghdad was "a noncombat zone." The ASDF crews stayed on in
Kuwait until December 2008, and there the issue stood until Kitazawa's bombshellannouncement — a sign, perhaps, that the Democratic Party of Japan that swept into powerwith a landslide election victory on Aug. 30, 2009 may choose to reverse years of official
mendacity over government policies in Iraq.
Kondo agrees that the announcement was probably attributable to new DPJ pressure, but
she believes that the Defense Ministry simply no longer cares what people think about the
SDF. "It basically figured that the release of this information would not hurt its plans in the
future," she says.
That reasoning, Kondo believes, was adopted because the government had already proved
it could disregard popular opposition, flaunt the Constitution and ignore the little media
flak the war generated. With the precedent set, the way is paved for more militaryadventures abroad, she argues. "If the government says in the future that we have done thisbefore, Japanese citizens will accept that."
Says Kawaguchi Hajime, a lawyer lobbying for a government inquiry into the SDF dispatch:"We have to get to the bottom of this episode in Japan's history or we will pay the price. But
there is no consciousness of the need to challenge the government. Nobody appears
interested."
Kawaguchi believes that the archives could tell more. Were the SDF infantry based at
Samawah in southern Iraq only engaged in "humanitarian assistance" to the local
population? Were local insurgents, as some believe, paid off to prevent them attacking
Japanese forces? And on the financial front, how much did the entire five-year mission cost
Japanese taxpayers? The Japanese government has released no estimates of the costs of its
Iraq operations.
Nearly seven years after it was launched on March 20, 2003, the U.S.-led war in Iraq iswidely acknowledged as an act of mendacity and an epic folly.
As everyone now knows, the weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) used as the prime
justification for the invasion never materialized. Similarly, significant links to al-Qaida were
never found, and the nation that was promised democracy and prosperity is now ashattered, sectarian and Balkanized state with ethnic cleansing virtually eliminating thepossibility for people of the Sunni and Shiite Muslim faiths to share neighborhoods or cities.
More than two million Iraqis have fled abroad, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for
Refugees; perhaps another 2.7 million have resettled elsewhere inside the country; and themost credible total death toll ranges from 100,000 to well over a million.

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The impact back in the United States of the wider "war on terror" has also been profound.
That impact includes the legitimization of torture, the spread of government surveillance,
the shredding of habeas corpus, Guantanamo, the institutionalization of so-called
extraordinary rendition, CIA dirty tricks, and the enormous price tag — a staggering $3
trillion for Iraq and Afghanistan, and counting, according to economist and Nobel laureate
Joseph Stiglitz, who points out that ordinary Americans will be paying the price for George
W. Bush's decision to go to war for decades.
But at least in the U.S. and its prime partner in arms, the United Kingdom, there has been a
reckoning of sorts. Stemming from the continuing public debate, there has been a halfhearted mea culpa on torture and Guantanamo from President Barack Obama and astartling admission by Britain's prime minister at the time of the Iraq invasion, Tony Blair,that he would have invaded Iraq with or without WMDs. And that came ahead of his
testimony to the government's current Iraq Inquiry announced by Prime Minister Gordon
Brown in June 2009, which is due to report in June 2010.
In Japan, although the SDF was finally pulled out of Iraq in December 2008, there has beenno government inquiry, no major excavation of the leadup to the war — and no interest by
the mainstream media in digging around what happened, laments Takeshita Takashi, ajournalist with Akahata, the Japan Communist Party newspaper.

Ocean waves: Crew members aboard the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force's fleet-support ship
Mashuu bid farewell to a Pakistan Navy vessel after a refueling operation in the Indian Ocean on Jan.
15, 2010. That day, the law authorizing such missions supporting U.S.-led antiterrorism operations in
Afghanistan over the previous eight years finally expired. KYODO PHOTO

The SDF Role in Iraq
Takeshita uncovered evidence last year that just 6 percent of the 45,000 people
transported by the ASDF between March 2004 and December 2008 worked for the United
Nations. The vast bulk of its activities involved ferrying U.S. troops. So much for the"humanitarian and reconstruction assistance" mission on the basis of which the war was
sold to the Japanese public, he concludes.
Nobody knows the final price tag for the dispatch, admits senior DPJ lawmaker Kondo
Shoichi, who believes a U.K.-style inquiry — which he would support — is unlikely. His

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assessment, in fact, is that "over half" of his party had problems with the decision to invade
Iraq. "There would, however, be pressure against such an inquiry — ultimately, there are a
lot of people who would worry about the impact on U.S.-Japan relations," he believes.
Still, Kondo says that although senior DPJ members, including Kan Naoto, the party's
former leader (2000-04) and current Finance Minister, and Prime Minister Hatoyama
Yukio, disagreed with the prosecution of the war in Iraq, the bureaucracy and the Japan-U.S.
Security Treaty which was signed on Jan. 19, 1960, weigh heavily on the political process.
Last November, DPJ Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirano Hirofumi effectively smothered any
hope of a postmortem on the Iraq adventure when he declared the SDF dispatch legal,
reversing the conclusion of Kan, who, as party leader in 2004, had called it unconstitutional.
"As an opposition party, we could not determine if the area where they were sent was anoncombat zone," said Hirano. "But as we (now) recognize it is a noncombat zone, we havejudged that the SDF activities there were constitutional."
Peace activist Kondo Yuriko calls that statement "unbelievable" — but she blames
journalists as much as politicians. "The mass media is the reason the government candodge responsibility. They drop anything that doesn't make headlines and don't dig up
information or do long-term investigative reporting. This allows Japanese citizens to forgetthe past," she observes.
Kondo, Takeshita and Kawaguchi, and their neoconservative opponents — such as former
ASDF Chief of Staff General Tamogami Toshio — at least agree on one thing: The roots ofJapan's secretive, convoluted defense policies lie in the postwar, U.S.-dominated Allied
Occupation, which created the "war-renouncing" Article 9 of the Constitution.
Pacifists and anti-war activists cling to Article 9 because it helped construct what appeared
to be a new type of modern state: one that explicitly rejected imperialism and war.
General Tamogami, Article 9 and the Constitution
Tamogami, who was sacked in 2008 for publicly arguing that Japan was not given sufficientcredit for ending white European colonialism in Asia, despises Article 9 for exactly thesame reason. "The aim was to weaken Japan," he says.
"That's why Japan's self-defense forces are bound by law and not allowed to move as theywish. That's why the country cannot exercise collective defense, take offensive action, or
export weaponry. That's why it is bound by three basic nonnuclear principles. Since the
Occupation, the country has been bound hand and foot," he stated in a December interview
with the writer.
Tamogami is the latest in a long line of political and military figures with views that run
counter to the Constitution. He claimed that "two-thirds" of SDF officers back his views.
"I'm also supported by many politicians. I can't say their names because it would cause
them trouble. (On being asked whether former prime ministers Abe Shinzo [2006-07] andAso Taro [2008-09] were among his supporters, Tamogami indicated they were.)
The U.S. defense establishment has long been ideologically closer to Tamogami and his ilk
than to the Japanese pacifists who have fought to preserve Article 9. In 1946, almost assoon as the ink was dry on the postwar, U.S.-orchestrated "peace" Constitution, Japan's newMcNeill: Secrets and Lies Ampo, Japan’s Role in the Iraq War and the Consistution

192

military ally began pressing for rearmament in the face of Chinese and Russian communism.
That threat ushered in a vast expansion of U.S. power and military bases throughout theregion.
Ampo and Japan’s Three Non-Nuclear Principles
Even Japan's so-called three nonnuclear principles, outlined by Prime Minister Sato Eisaku
in 1967 and formally adopted by the Diet in 1971 — principles that commit Japan to neverproduce, possess or allow the entry of nuclear weapons into the country — were not safe
from the political calculations needed to maintain the facade of pacifism.
The no-nuke rule was undermined by a backroom deal struck between Washington andTokyo that was signed by Sato and President Richard Nixon in 1969. Its origins go back at
least four years to a memo signed at the US Embassy in Tokyo in July 1965 (link).
After decades of rumors, that secret pact — allowing nuclear-armed U.S. ships and aircraftto traffic anywhere through or over Japanese territory — was confirmed by a seniorJapanese Foreign Ministry bureaucrat last summer. Consequently, it appears uncontestablethat the LDP had lied about the existence of the pact for years. Indeed, a team Hatoyamatasked with investigating the secret pact reported last November that it had discovered
files at the Foreign Ministry proving its existence.
The deal, agreed during the fraught negotiations to rewrite the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty
in 1960, is said to have depended on a "misinterpretation." Tokyo claimed that it believed it
would receive prior consultation before any nuclear-armed dockings or flyovers;
Washington had no such understanding.
When the LDP discovered otherwise, it kept quiet — "instead of publicly acknowledging achange in position," the leading, liberal-leaning Asahi Shimbun newspaper said last year. In
fact, LDP politicians repeatedly denied the deal, even after the Japanese parliament
officially adopted the no-nuke principles in 1971, and former Prime Minister Sato evenwon the 1974 Nobel Peace Prize for his "opposition to any plans for a Japanese nuclearweapons program."
Today, the official bureaucratic line is still that the pact doesn't exist.
Chipping Away at Constitutional Freedoms
Just as for the United States, the cost to Japan of the Iraq adventure has not been limited to
the financial. A series of test cases against antiwar activists has dismayed lawyers andhuman-rights activists, who say the post-9/11 Japanese state is attacking constitutional
freedoms.
On Nov. 30, 2009, the Supreme Court declared 62-year-old Buddhist priest Arakawa Yosei
guilty of trespassing for distributing antiwar fliers in a Tokyo condominium in December
2004. The court had almost nothing to say about Arakawa's detention without trial for 23days, or his argument that far more was at stake for everyone than the peace andtranquillity of one angry resident who apparently complained.

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Arakawa Yosei speaks to reporters (Kyodo Newsphoto)

The previous year, the Supreme Court also ended a four-year legal battle between the state
and three veteran peace activists based in Tachikawa, western Tokyo, when it ruled thatthey trespassed by putting antiwar fliers in the post boxes of Self-Defense Force members
in February 2004. After years of peaceful and largely impotent campaigning, the arrest of
the three, their detention for 75 days, and their historic conviction seemed to show that theauthorities had decided to go to war against their ideological enemies.
"They need to neutralize people like us before they can get what they want: the end of
Article 9," said Obora Toshiyuki, 52, a school cook who is one of the convicted activists.

The Tachikawa three: Onishi (l), Sachimi, Obora

Obora and campaigning lawyer Kawaguchi Hajime were among those who predicted thesame techniques would be used on other targets, and so it has proved.
In January, amid rising unemployment and resentment at Japan's growing wealthdisparities, a small group of anti-poverty protesters in Tokyo's central Shinjuku district
were harried by police and told by them that they could be arrested for distributing fliers.

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According to eyewitnesses who were quoted online on Global Voices, an international
network of citizen journalists, one police officer said: "(We're doing this) to secure freedomof speech, to preserve the peace, the peace of the Japanese people."
Other activists have been similarly targeted. Lawyers say the 2009 revision of the Public
Safety and Security Ordinance, introduced under the Liberal Democratic Party, is anotherattempt to restrain public protests.
"If you send troops abroad, freedom declines at home," says Kawaguchi.
David McNeill writes for The Independent and other publications, including The Irish Times
and The Chronicle of Higher Education. He is an Asia-Pacific Journal coordinator. This is arevised and expanded version of an article that appeared in The Japan Times on Jan 24,
2010. http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20100124x1.html

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Finally, Richard Falk, “The 10th Anniversary of the Iraq War," concludes this course
reader. Falk, from the beginning of the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, warned of“mission creep” to other areas of the world, and this warning has proved prophetic. While
the main responsibility for the interventions lies with America and Britain, Falk sees the
war as a huge disaster for everyone. He advises Japan to “soul search” the appropriatenessof its decision to support America in Iraq, particularly given the way that the intervention
undermined the credibility of the United Nations. His critical assessment of the war in
Afghanistan is particularly noteworthy because immediately following the terrorist eventsof 9/11, he publicized his opinion that intervention in Afghanistan would conform to thelegal definition of a “just war.”
The 10th Anniversary of the Iraq War
Richard Falk
March 13, 2013
http://apjjf.org/2013/11/11/Richard-Falk/3917/article.html
American and British foreign policy and the peace and stability of the Middle East region,but it was also a serious setback for international law, the UN, and world order.
In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the United States was supposedly burdened by what
policymakers came to call ‘the Vietnam Syndrome.’ This was a Washington shorthand forthe psychological inhibitions to engage in military interventions in the non-Western world
due to the negative attitudes towards such imperial undertakings that were supposed toexist among the American public and in the government, especially among the military whowere widely blamed for the outcome in Vietnam. Many American militarists at the timecomplained that the Vietnam Syndrome was a combined result of an anti-war plotengineered by the liberal media and a response to an unpopular conscription that required
many middle class Americans to fight in a war that lacked popular support or a convincing
strategic or legal rationale. The flag-draped coffins of dead young Americans were shown
on TV, leading defense hawks to contend somewhat ridiculously that ‘the war was lost in
American living rooms.’
The government made adjustments: the draft
was abolished, reliance was henceforth
placed on an all-volunteer professional
military, and renewed efforts were made toassure media support for subsequent military
operations.

Coffins returning to Arlington Cemetery

President, George H.W. Bush told the world in1991 immediately after the Gulf War wasfought to reverse the Iraqi annexation of
Kuwait that “we have finally kicked theVietnam Syndrome.” In effect, the senior
President Bush was saying to the grandFalk: The 10th Anniversary of the Iraq War

strategists in the White House and Pentagon that the role of American military power wasagain available for use around the world. What the Gulf War showed was that on aconventional battlefield, in this setting of a desert war, American military superiority
would be decisive, and could produce a quick victory with minimal costs in American lives.
This new militarist enthusiasm created the political base for recourse to the NATO War in1999 to wrest Kosovo from Serb control. To ensure the avoidance of casualties, reliance
was placed on air power, which took more time than expected, but further vindicated thewar planners’ claim that the United States could now fight and win ‘zero casualty wars.’ Infact there were no NATO combat deaths in the Kosovo War.
More sophisticated American war planners understood that not all challenges to UnitedStates interests around the world could be met with air power in the absence of groundcombat. Increasingly, political violence involving geopolitical priorities took the form oftransnational violence (as in the 9/11 attacks) or was situated within the boundaries ofterritorial states, and involved Western military intervention designed to crush societal
forces of national resistance. The Bush presidency badly confused its new self-assurance
about the conduct of battlefield international warfare and its old nemesis from Vietnam
War days of counter-insurgency warfare, also known as low-intensity or asymmetricwarfare.
David Petraeus rose through the ranks of the American military by repackaging
counterinsurgency warfare in a post-Vietnam format relying upon an approach developed
by noted guerrilla war expert David Galula, who contended that in the Vietnam War thefatal mistake was made of supposing that such a war would be determined 80% by combat
battles in the jungles and paddy fields with the remaining 20% devoted to the capture ofthe ‘hearts and minds’ of the indigenous population. Galula argued that counterinsurgency
wars could only be won if this formula was inverted. This meant that 80% of future U.S.
military interventions should be devoted to non-military aspects of societal wellbeing:
restoring electricity, providing police protection for normal activity, building and staffing
schools, improving sanitation and garbage removal, and providing health car and jobs.
Afghanistan, and then Iraq, became the testing grounds for applying these nation-building
lessons of Vietnam, only to reveal in the course of their long, destructive and expensive
failures that the wrong lessons had been learned. These conflicts were wars of national
resistance, a continuation of the anti-colonial struggles against West-centric colonial
domination, and regardless of whether the killing was complemented by sophisticatedsocial and economic programs, it still involved a pronounced and deadly challenge by
foreign interests to the rights of self-determination that entailed killing Iraqi women andchildren, and violating their most basic rights through the harsh mechanics of foreign
occupation. It also proved impossible to disentangle the planned 80% from the 20% as thehostility of the Iraqi people to their supposed American liberators demonstrated over andover again, especially as many Iraqis on the side of the occupiers proved to be corrupt andbrutal, sparking popular suspicion and internal polarization. The truly ‘fatal mistake’ madeby Petraeus, Galula, and all the counterinsurgency advocates that have followed this path,is the failure to recognize that when the American military and its allies attack and occupy
a non-Western country, especially in the Islamic world, when they start dividing, killing andpolicing its inhabitants, popular resistance will be mobilized. This is precisely what

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happened in Iraq, and the suicide bombings to this day suggest that the ugly patterns ofviolence have not stopped even with the ending of America’s direct combat role.
The United States was guilty of a fundamental misunderstanding of the Iraq War displayed
to the world when George W. Bush theatrically declared on May 1, 2003 a wildly premature
victory from the deck of an American aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, with thenotorious banner proclaiming ‘mission accomplished’ plainly visible behind the podium as
the sun sank over the Pacific Ocean.
Bush reveled in this misunderstanding byassuming that the attack phase of the war was
the whole war, forgetting about the moredifficult and protracted occupation phase. The
real Iraq War, rather than ending, was about
to begin, that is, the violent internal struggle
for the political future of the country, one
made more difficult and protracted by the
military presence of the US and its allies. Thiscounterinsurgency sequel to occupation
would not be decided on the kind ofbattlefield where arrayed military capabilities confront one another, but rather through a
war of attrition waged by hit and run domestic Iraqi forces, abetted by foreign volunteers,
opposed to the tactics of Washington. Such a war has a shadowy beginning and an
uncertain ending, and is often, as in Iraq, as it proved to be earlier in Vietnam, a quagmire
for intervening powers.
The Iraq War was a war of aggression from its inception, being an unprovoked use ofarmed force against a sovereign state in a situation other than self-defense. The Nuremberg
and Tokyo War Crimes Tribunals convened after World War II had declared suchaggressive warfare to be a ‘crime against peace’ and prosecuted and punished political andmilitary leaders of Germany and Japan as war criminals. We can ask why have George W.
Bush and Tony Blair not been investigated, indicted, and prosecuted for their roles inplanning and prosecuting the Iraq War. As folk singer Bob Dylan instructed us long ago, theanswer is ‘blowin’ in the wind,’ or in more straightforward language, the reasons for such
impunity conferred upon the American and British leaders is a crude display ofgeopolitics—their countries were not defeated and occupied, their governments neversurrendered, and such strategic failures (or successes) are exempted from legal scrutiny.
These are the double standards that make international criminal justice more a matter of
power politics than global justice.

Falk: The 10th Anniversary of the Iraq War

Global civil society with its own limited
resources had challenged both the onset of
the Iraq War, and later its actual unfolding.
On and around February 15, 2003, what the
Guinness Book of Records called “the largest
anti-war rally in history” took the form of
about 3,000 demonstrations in 800 cities
located in more than 60 countries andaccording to the BBC involved an estimated 610 million persons. Although such a global
show of opposition to recourse to war was unprecedented, it failed to halt the war. It did,
however, have the lasting effect of undermining the American claims of justification for theattack and occupation of Iraq. It also led to an unprecedented effort by groups around theworld to pass judgment on the war by holding sessions in which peace activists andinternational law experts alleged the criminality of the Iraq War, and called for war crimes
prosecutions of Bush and Blair. As many as twenty such events were held in various partsof the world, with a culminating Iraq War Tribunal convened in June of 2005, which
included testimony from more than 50 experts, including several from Iraq and a jury of
conscience headed by Arundhati Roy.
There is also the question of complicity of countries that supported the war with troop
deployments, such as Japan, which dispatched 1000 members of its self-defense units to
Iraq in July 2003 to help with non-combat dimensions of the occupation. Such a role is aclear breach of international law and morality. It is also inconsistent with Article 9 of theJapanese Constitution. It was coupled with Tokyo’s diplomatic support for the U.S./UK-led
Iraq War from start to finish. Should such a record of involvement have any adverse
consequences? It would seem that Japan might at least review the appropriateness of its
complicit participation in a war of aggression, and how that diminishes the credibility of
any Japanese claim to uphold the responsibilities of membership in the United Nations. At
least, it provides the people of Japan with a moment for national soul-searching to think
about what kind of world order will in the future best achieve peace, stability, and humandignity.
Are there lessons to be drawn from the Iraq War? I believe there are. The overwhelming
lesson is that in this historical period interventions by the West in the non-West, especiallywhen not authorized by the UN Security Council, can rarely succeed in attaining theirstated goals. More broadly, counterinsurgency warfare involving a core encounter between
Western invading and occupying forces and a national resistance movement will not be
decided on the basis of hard power military superiority, but rather by the dynamics of selfdetermination associated with the party that has the more credible nationalist credentials,
which include the will to persist in the struggle for as long as it takes, and the capacity tocapture the high moral ground in the ongoing struggle for domestic and international
public support. It is only when we witness the dismantling of many of America’s 700+
acknowledged foreign military bases spread around the world, and see the end of repeated
US military intervention globally, that we can have some hope that the correct lessons of
the Iraq War are finally being learned. Until then there will be further attempts by the U.S.

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Government to correct the tactical mistakes that it claims explain past failures in Iraq (andAfghanistan), and new interventions will undoubtedly be proposed in coming years, mostprobably leading to costly new failures, and further controversies as to ‘why?’ we fought
and why we lost. American leaders will remain unlikely to acknowledge that the most basic
mistake is itself militarism, at least until challenged by robust anti-militarist political forces
not currently on the political scene.
This is the English version of an article that appeared in the March 15, 2013 edition of
Shukan Kin’yobi.
Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law, Princeton
University, and United Nations Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur for the Occupied
Palestinian Territories. His recent books include Richard Falk, Mark Juergensmeyer and
Vesselin Popovski, eds., Legality and Legitimacy in Global Affairs and Richard Falk andDavid Krieger, The Path to Zero: Dialogues on Nuclear Danger.

Falk: The 10th Anniverary of the Iraq War

Further Reading
For other scholarship related to this course reader, the following resources arerecommended:• Lee Hudson Teslik, “Japan and Its Military,” Council on Foreign Relations, April 13, 2006.
Open-access availability here:
How did Japan get its “war-renouncing Constitution”? Though dated, this website provides
comprehensive basics on the controversies surrounding Japan’s postwar Constitution anddevelopment of its Self-Defense Forces (SDF).
Since the start of the second Abe administration, lawmakers supporting constitutional
revision have been focusing on revising Article 96 rather than Article 9. Article 96 requiresthat any proposal to change the Constitution receive approval by two-thirds ofparliamentary members in each chamber, followed by a national referendum. As a prelude
to eventual revision of Article 9, Abe has been urging that Article 96 be amended to require
only one half of Diet members to approve the proposal before seeking a nationalreferendum.
• Richard A. Falk, The Costs of War: International Law, the UN, and World Order after Iraq
(New York: Routledge, 2008).
Why couldn’t international law prevent the Iraq intervention? This book will be suitable forupper-division and graduate students looking for more in-depth analysis on controversies
of international law. Falk’s basic thesis as elucidated in the first chapter is that America’s
Iraq intervention undermined the authority of the United Nations. It also damaged thelegal capacity of human rights norms such as the Geneva Conventions that were designed
to encourage voluntary international protection of civil societies from actions of oppressive
national governments. The final chapter of Falk’s book discusses a local and global citizenorganized “World Tribunal on Iraq” that was convened in Istanbul in June 2005. The fourday trial, based on excellent documentation, concluded that the American-led intervention
flagrantly violated norms of international law by deceiving citizens, and reaffirmed legal
mechanisms to check the power of governments to conduct “wars of choice” waged forstrategic advantage only, as opposed to self-defense.
• Sabine Frühstück, Uneasy Warriors: Gender, Memory and Popular Culture in the JapaneseArmy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).
Frühstück’s book offers firsthand insights on gender in the SDF and how military-inspired,crisis-bound masculinity and femininity are reinforced there. Frühstück’s analysis includes
interviews with men and women in the SDF and their spouses, recent popular culture, andcomparisons with American military culture. The text is an excellent match with the article
by Fumika Sato on Japan’s “camouflaged” military.

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A shorter essay on gender in the military is provided by Fumika Sato [name orderoriginal], in, "A Camouflaged Military: Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and Globalized Gender
Mainstreaming," The Asia Pacific Journal, Vol. 10, issue 22 no. 3, May 28, 2012. Sato points
out that representations of gender have helped to “camouflage” the Japanese military.
Japan’s policy makers have actively used women’s images to create an impression of theJapanese military as civilian-friendly. The SDF also routinely assigns males to do(perceived) “manly” jobs and females to do (perceived) “nurturing” roles such as nursing
and clerical work.
• Michael Penn, Japan and the War on Terror: Military Force and Political Pressure in the
U.S.-Japanese Alliance (London: I.B. Tauris, 2014).
Penn’s analysis contains considerable primary source material on Japan’s participation in
the “war on terror” and on the implications of this effort for the “normalization” of theJapanese military. His main contribution is to show the extent to which Japaneseparticipation in Iraq and Afghanistan served “alliance managers” or conservatives in the
United States and Japan who want to change the Constitution. Penn also introduces
dissenting intellectual leaders who stressed solutions such as increasing international
dialogue rather than military confrontation. Penn’s final point is that Japan, on the whole,has enjoyed good relations with the Islamic world, but that its “alliance managers” paid
little attention to Japan’s strengths in this area.