Joanna
Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:
> 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.
>
>
>
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