From the author, on another list. JCH
> Dear Colleagues:
>
> The Washington Post has just published a piece of mine, "The Rise
> of Japan¹s
> Thought Police", about the impact of right-wing intimidation against
> Japanese moderates and internationalists.
>
> I have blogged about the piece today at:
>
> http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001609.php
>
> The URL for the Washington Post piece is here:
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/25/
> AR2006082501
> 176.html?referrer=emailarticlepg
>
> And I am pasting the article below for those who cannot click
> through to
> links.
>
> All the best,
>
> Steve Clemons
>
> --
> Steven Clemons
> Director, American Strategy Program, New America Foundation; and
> Publisher, www.TheWashingtonNote.com
> 202-986-0342 phone 202-986-3696 fax
> clemons at newamerica.net Email
>
> Washington Post
>
> The Rise of Japan's Thought Police
>
> By Steven Clemons
> Sunday, August 27, 2006; B02
>
> Anywhere else, it might have played out as just another low-stakes
> battle
> between policy wonks. But in Japan, a country struggling to find a
> brand of
> nationalism that it can embrace, a recent war of words between a
> flamboyant
> newspaper editorialist and an editor at a premier foreign-policy
> think tank
> was something far more alarming: the latest assault in a campaign of
> right-wing intimidation of public figures that is squelching free
> speech and
> threatening to roll back civil society.
>
> On Aug. 12, Yoshihisa Komori -- a Washington-based editorialist for
> the
> ultra-conservative Sankei Shimbun newspaper -- attacked an article
> by Masaru
> Tamamoto, the editor of Commentary, an online journal run by the Japan
> Institute of International Affairs. The article expressed concern
> about the
> emergence of Japan's strident new "hawkish nationalism,"
> exemplified by
> anti-China fear-mongering and official visits to a shrine honoring
> Japan's
> war dead. Komori branded the piece "anti-Japanese," and assailed the
> mainstream author as an "extreme leftist intellectual."
>
> But he didn't stop there. Komori demanded that the institute's
> president,
> Yukio Satoh, apologize for using taxpayer money to support a writer
> who
> dared to question Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's annual visits
> to the
> Yasukuni Shrine, in defiance of Chinese protests that it honors war
> criminals from World War II.
>
> Remarkably, Satoh complied. Within 24 hours, he had shut down
> Commentary and
> withdrawn all of the past content on the site -- including his own
> statement
> that it should be a place for candid discourse on Japan's foreign-
> policy and
> national-identity challenges. Satoh also sent a letter last week to
> the
> Sankei editorial board asking for forgiveness and promising a complete
> overhaul of Commentary's editorial management.
>
> The capitulation was breathtaking. But in the political atmosphere
> that has
> overtaken Japan, it's not surprising. Emboldened by the recent rise in
> nationalism, an increasingly militant group of extreme right-wing
> activists
> who yearn for a return to 1930s-style militarism, emperor-worship and
> "thought control" have begun to move into more mainstream circles
> -- and to
> attack those who don't see things their way.
>
> Just last week, one of those extremists burned down the parental
> home of
> onetime prime ministerial candidate Koichi Kato, who had criticized
> Koizumi's decision to visit Yasukuni this year. Several years ago,
> the home
> of Fuji Xerox chief executive and Chairman Yotaro "Tony" Kobayashi was
> targeted by handmade firebombs after he, too, voiced the opinion that
> Koizumi should stop visiting Yasukuni. The bombs were dismantled, but
> Kobayashi continued to receive death threats. The pressure had its
> effect.
> The large business federation that he helps lead has withdrawn its
> criticism
> of Koizumi's hawkishness toward China and his visits to Yasukuni, and
> Kobayashi now travels with bodyguards.
>
> In 2003, then-Japanese Deputy Foreign Minister Hitoshi Tanaka
> discovered a
> time bomb in his home. He was targeted for allegedly being soft on
> North
> Korea. Afterward, conservative Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara
> contended in a
> speech that Tanaka "had it coming."
>
> Another instance of free-thinking-meets-intimidation involved
> Sumiko Iwao,
> an internationally respected professor emeritus at Keio University.
> Right-wing activists threatened her last February after she
> published an
> article suggesting that much of Japan is ready to endorse female
> succession
> in the imperial line; she issued a retraction and is now reportedly
> lying
> low.
>
> Such extremism raises disturbing echoes of the past. In May 1932,
> Japanese
> Prime Minister Tsuyoshi Inukai was assassinated by a group of right-
> wing
> activists who opposed his recognition of Chinese sovereignty over
> Manchuria
> and his staunch defense of parliamentary democracy. In the post-
> World War II
> era, right-wing fanatics have largely lurked in the shadows, but have
> occasionally threatened those who veer too close to or speak too
> openly
> about sensitive topics concerning Japan's national identity, war
> responsibility or imperial system.
>
> What's alarming and significant about today's intimidation by the
> right is
> that it's working -- and that it has found some mutualism in the
> media.
> Sankei's Komori has no direct connection to those guilty of the
> most recent
> acts, but he's not unaware that his words frequently animate them
> -- and
> that their actions in turn lend fear-fueled power to his
> pronouncements,
> helping them silence debate. What's worse, neither Japan's current
> prime
> minister nor Shinzo Abe, the man likely to succeed him in next month's
> elections, has said anything to denounce those trying to stifle the
> free
> speech of Japan's leading moderates.
>
> There are many more cases of intimidation. I have spoken to dozens of
> Japan's top academics, journalists and government civil servants in
> the past
> few days; many of them pleaded with me not to disclose this or that
> incident
> because they feared violence and harassment from the right. One top
> political commentator in Japan wrote to me: "I know the right-
> wingers are
> monitoring what I write and waiting to give me further trouble. I
> simply
> don't want to waste my time nor energy for these people."
>
> Japan needs nationalism. But it needs a healthy nationalism -- not the
> hawkish, strident variety that is lately forcing many of the
> country's best
> lights to dim their views.
>
> Steven Clemons is director of the American Strategy Program at the New
> America Foundation and co-founder of the Japan Policy Research
> Institute.