Toshio Masuda, Writer, Commentator, and International Economist
Official Website : http://www.chokugen.com/
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Koizumi’s mission to Yasukuni has ended.
On April 30, 2006, the front page of Asahi News Papers (with over 5 million subscribers in Japan) reported on an insightful remark by Kent Calder of The Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies in Washington D.C. on the Yasukuni Shrine issue. Mr. Calder said, “Japan, when it loses conversations with neighbor countries, is of no use to the US; the Japan-US alliance works only when Japan fulfills its responsibilities in Asia”.
Chinese President Hu Jintao has asserted that Japan Prime Minister Koizumi’s visit to Yasukuni, where Class A war criminals are honored, is the biggest obstacle to the establishment of a relationship between China and Japan. Also, the foreign minister of China officially announced that there would be no Summit Meeting with Japan until Japan’s prime minister ceases visits to Yasukuni..
There is a big difference in religious tenets in how Japan and China regard the hereafter . The Japanese do not distinguish an enemy from a friend after one dies and deals impartially with the dead in the spirit that all become a deity after death. That is why the Japanese enshrine both friendly victims and enemy victims. In reverse, Chinese are eternally intolerant toward an enemy. The enemy is enemy forever. When defeated, revenge is forever. For these reasons, the Chinese government is always at risk of the people’s revenge if the truth of the mass-murders of tens of million of the people by Red Revolution that built the current communist government were acknowledged. Thus, the Chinese government emphasizes past invasions and massacres by the Japanese Army and has even built anti-Japan museums to convince the Chinese people of these accusations.
To the Chinese, Koizumi’s visit to Yasukuni to pray for the world peace and to renounce aggression is interpreted as Japan’s revival of aggression against China. So the more the Chinese government recoils at the Japanese prime minister’s visits to Yasukuni and the more China demands Japan to cease visiting Yasukuni, the more difficult it will be for Japan’s prime minister to stop visiting Yasukuni because the leader of Japan can not be viewed by his people as bowing down to China in obedience to their demand. Also, for Koizumi though, Yasukuni has become a tool to wake the Japanese to their patriotism that has been long forgotten, but is reviving.
Kent Calder has said that Japan will not be viewed as the most important ally of the U.S. if Japan loses conversation with neighboring countries, especially with China.
In my opinion, Koizumi’s visit to Yasukuni has been good for the U.S. too.
The U.S.’s vital strategy is to secure the energy sources in the world and to keep expanding the U.S. dollar in world markets. Energy is the life line of the world economy and expanding the U.S. dollar market by the name of Freedom is to keep U.S. debts being paid by the world markets in U.S. dollars. Under the guise of “Expansion of Freedom”, Bush offers economic aid to those countries where a democratic revolution is possible and sends the military to pressure those countries where a democratic revolution is impossible because of a strong dictatorship.
Now to China, the country of communist dictatorship and at the same time the world’s biggest market of the future. The U.S. has initiated a military strategy called “Military Transformation”, in part, to respond to China’s growing military forces on the frontier of North and East Pacific regions. The goal of Military Transformation in the Pacific region is to “check” China’s military forces and keep them limited to mainland China, leaving the door of aggression open only to Taiwan. By the time the U.S. gets ready to go for this manifest strategy against China, it will have been very important to have kept China’s eyes on Yasukuni.
Today the U.S. needs China to look at the realty of the world order. Either China can “fall” to democracy to give their market away to the U.S. dollar or China can pursue aggression to its own self -destruction.
So, for today no need of Yasukuni and no need of Koizumi for U.S.!
I wonder if Mr. Kent Calder suggests, the next prime minister of Japan be the one who would not visit Yasukuni.
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