Nagasaki's Revenge

Japanese teenagers may lay claim to cluelessness about the world-changing events that took place in their country in the second half of 1945, but yesterday's resignation of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe suggests that those recollections are far from forgotten in the mainstream of Japanese life.

Japan, the nation against which the United States unleashed the first ever cataclysm of nuclear war, has survived and thrived on an outwardly imposed tradition of military pacifism. A condition which was forced upon that great nation by the even greater nation that had defeated it so utterly and convincingly as the culmination of World War II. It is a tradition which has allowed the Japanese to gain that respect and power which was the impetus for their participation in said War, and it was the United States, using that extraordinary combination of magnanimity and imperiousness come together in the person of General Douglas MacArthur, which ensured that the Japanese nation should conscientiously avoid a military path to that long coveted ascendancy in our evolving World Economy.

Lately, Prime Minster Shinzo Abe's LDP has utilized a perfectly Reaganesque ability to transform historical reality into the delusionality of Hubris, utilizing neither shame nor pride to sway them from their pipe-dream. Fortunately for the people of Japan, they are apparently - for whatever reason - less forgetful than those kids in Okazaki's documentary would seem to be.

Japanese Premier, Losing Support, Resigns
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
Published: September 12, 2007

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The opposition leader, Ichiro Ozawa, has focused his attention on a contentious law that allows Japan’s naval forces to join a mission to refuel American and other ships participating in the war in Afghanistan. The law will expire on Nov. 1 unless it is extended.

The debate over the law is expected to be bruising. Opinion polls have shown that most Japanese opposed extending the law. And Mr. Ozawa tapped into a general unease that, under Mr. Abe and his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, Japan had grown too close to the United States militarily, even to the point of possibly violating its pacifist Constitution.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, Japan has passed special laws to circumvent its pacifist Constitution to participate in the American-led wars in Afghanistan and then Iraq. But the Japanese government has released few details about the nature of its assistance to the United States military, leading many opposition politicians to suggest that Japanese troops are in fact violating the Constitution.

Opposition politicians have suggested that Japan has refueled American vessels that were involved, not in Afghanistan, but in Iraq. In addition, they have said that Japan’s air force — which has been transporting American troops between Kuwait and Baghdad — has clearly overstepped its stated mission of engaging in humanitarian activities.

[What Is and What You Better Believe]

Whether or not a new Parliament is imminent and necessary for Japan to return to its Constitutional imperative for military passivity seems almost moot at this point. Unlike my own country, where the opposition Democrats did democratically take control over both of the main legislative assemblies on a platform of Peace, and then promptly let such fall to the side, the Japanese seem well on their way to Practicing What They Preach and substantively supporting the ideals of their Constitution.

Is "funny" how folks will tend to make use of some powerful gift which a more powerful party has given to them and actually use it for their own benefit, eh?