When Nobutaka Machimura, Japan’s Foreign Minister, asked Israel to halt weapons sales to Japan’s neighbours at the weekend, there was little doubt which particular neighbour he had in mind.
And when Japan’s defence ministry recently drew up contingency plans to deploy 55 000 troops in the event of an invasion of disputed islands off southern Japan, there was no question who the most likely invader would be.
While the world watches China’s rapid rise towards superpower status with awe, Japan, China’s old enemy, watches with foreboding.
It is almost inconceivable that Japan and China would ever fight again. The two countries are increasingly economically interdependent. But relations are certainly deteriorating.
Political tensions, territorial rivalries, competition over energy resources, and China’s military build-up, dramatised by a recent, illegal incursion by a nuclear submarine, provide the ingredients for a 21st-century oriental remake of the Cold War.
Japan’s brutal 1930s wars of conquest are far from forgotten or forgiven in China.
But anti-Japanese nationalist sentiment is now being exploited to boost the Communist leadership’s waning ideological authority.
Chinese anger focuses on the visits of the Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, to Tokyo’s Yasukuni shrine, where war criminals are commemorated alongside Japan’s war dead. China says this proves Japan has not truly repented its militarist past.
Beijing refuses to hold bilateral summits until Koizumi kowtows and for this, among other reasons, is opposing Japan’s bid for a United Nations security council seat. The antipathy is mutual.
A survey last year found that 58% of Japanese (like most Taiwanese) fear China’s long-term intentions.
Japan’s latest defence review for the first time named China, along with North Korea, as a potential threat.
Meanwhile, Koizumi has suggested ending economic aid, which Beijing regards as its right in lieu of war reparations.
As Machimura made clear, Japan wants all countries, not just Israel, to stop arming China. This includes Britain and the EU, which are considering lifting an arms embargo imposed after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
But Japan’s response to China’s rise has several other dimensions. Before visiting Israel, Machimura went to Moscow.
Russia, another of China’s old enemies, shares Tokyo’s worries about Beijing’s regional ambitions. Bilateral trade is expanding, with Japanese investment flowing into Russia’s energy and automotive sectors. Military contacts are also growing.
Moscow announced this month that a new $11bn oil pipeline from eastern Siberia would run to the Pacific coast, allowing access to Japan, rather than to Daqing, in north-east China. Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, is expected to visit Tokyo soon. And high-level talks have even recommenced over a 60-year-old territorial dispute.
The Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, said Russia wanted to clear away old disagreements. ”The main thing now is to seek full cooperation in all spheres,” he told Machimura.
This is a big change. Exactly 100 years ago this month, Japan was destroying Russia’s Pacific fleet. Hostilities continued through much of the 20th century.
Japan’s unusual political and diplomatic assertiveness is being matched militarily despite its post-war pacifist constitution.
As a study by Christopher Hughes, published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, makes clear, the old rules are being bent as Japan confronts not only China but also problems posed by terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and the weakening of an over-stretched US defensive shield.
This national self-assertion encompasses landmark decisions to acquire ballistic missile defences and hi-tech force capabilities; send troops abroad (as in Iraq); and pursue military collaboration with South Korea, Australia and some south-east Asian countries.
”All this activity has been set against the background of sharpened domestic debate that challenges many post-war security taboos,” Dr Hughes writes.
”Japan’s policy-makers are questioning the self-imposed ban on Japan’s exercise of the right of collective self-defence … The prohibitions and principles that constrain Japan’s exercise of military power [are under] ongoing investigation.”
In other words, as China stands up, so too again may Japan. – Guardian Unlimited Â