Intimate Rivals

Japanese Domestic Politics and a Rising China

Sheila Smith

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780231538022
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

No country feels China's rise more deeply than Japan. Through intricate case studies of visits by Japanese politicians to the Yasukuni Shrine, conflicts over the boundaries of economic zones in the East China Sea, concerns about food safety, and strategies of island defense, Sheila A. Smith explores the policy issues testing the Japanese government as it tries to navigate its relationship with an advancing China.

Smith finds that Japan's interactions with China extend far beyond the negotiations between diplomats and include a broad array of social actors intent on influencing the Sino-Japanese relationship. Some of the tensions complicating Japan's encounters with China, such as those surrounding the Yasukuni Shrine or territorial disputes, have deep roots in the postwar era, and political advocates seeking a stronger Japanese state organize themselves around these causes. Other tensions manifest themselves during the institutional and regulatory reform of maritime boundary and food safety issues.

Smith scrutinizes the role of the Japanese government in coping with contention as China's influence grows and Japanese citizens demand more protection. Underlying the government's efforts is Japan's insecurity about its own capacity for change and its waning status as the leading economy in Asia. For many, China's rise means Japan's decline, and Smith suggests how Japan can maintain its regional and global clout as confidence in its postwar diplomatic and security approach diminishes.

1

CONTENDING WITH CHINA

In the final days of campaigning for the Japanese Upper House election in July 2013, Prime Minister Abe Shinzō visited Japan’s southernmost islands of Okinawa Prefecture. His conservative party was in trouble there because of a long-standing political dispute over a U.S. military airfield. Yet Abe did not go to champion the U.S.-Japan alliance; instead he went to the outlying islands of Ishigaki and Miyako, the first visit there by a Japanese prime minister in forty-eight years.¹ In these last hours of a definitive election, Abe chose to praise the Japan Coast Guard and Air Self-Defense Forces for defending their nation against China.

Tensions between Japan and China had been brewing for years, but the territorial dispute over isolated islands in the East China Sea prompted particularly strong emotions in Japan. Indeed, when he returned to the prime minister’s office in December 2012, Abe inherited an escalating crisis that seemed headed for a possible armed clash over the disputed Senkaku Islands.² Chinese and Japanese leaders had set aside this territorial dispute during the final phase of negotiations for the 1978 Treaty of Peace and Friendship and had worked together ever since to keep this issue off their diplomatic agenda. But a Chinese fishing trawler captain changed that in September 2010 when he deliberately rammed two Japan Coast Guard ships near the islands, prompting his arrest by the Japanese government. The Chinese and Japanese governments were at loggerheads for weeks afterward, with Beijing raising diplomatic pressure on Tokyo until it released the captain.

The domestic repercussions in Japan continued, however. A little more than a year later, Ishihara Shintarō, the erratic governor of Tokyo, announced that he would purchase these islands from their owner because the national government was incapable of defending their sovereignty against China.³ The Noda Yoshihiko cabinet moved to complete the national government’s purchase of the Senkakus in an effort to prevent Governor Ishihara from further inflaming the dispute with Beijing.⁴ But it was too late. Beijing no longer was interested in returning to a quiet management of their differences. The Chinese reaction to Noda’s purchase of the islands was swift and severe. Demonstrations erupted throughout the country, with widespread damage to Japanese companies, and the Chinese government introduced its own ships to the islands’ waters to assert its sovereign control.

The diplomatic crises with Beijing over the islands stirred those in Japan who had long thought that their postwar security choices had left their country vulnerable. Japanese politicians vied with one another in their calls for defending Japanese sovereignty over the islands. After the purchase of the islands, Abe campaigned for the presidency of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), advocating that government officials be stationed on the islands to assert Japan’s “effective control” (jikkō shihai) in the face of the Chinese sovereignty challenge. By the time Abe’s conservatives won a landslide victory in the Lower House on December 16, 2012, Senkaku nationalism was no longer a marginal cause in Japanese politics; the defense of Japanese sovereignty over the islands was now the rallying cry of Japan’s ruling party.

The escalating tensions between Japan and China quickly raised regional concerns when their two militaries were added to the mix. In December 2012, a small Chinese surveillance aircraft entered Japanese airspace over the disputed Senkakus, initially undetected by air defense radar. Japanese fighter jets scrambled, leading the new LDP government to review its rules of engagement (ROEs) for air defenses. Subsequently, Chinese fighter jets were added to the mix of surveillance flights near the islands, and new competition for airspace was added to the maritime tensions. A month later, as 2013 began, a Chinese naval vessel locked its fire-control radar on a Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force frigate. After the Japanese government made this incident public, the Chinese government began investigating the incident, and while the Ministry of Defense denied that it had even taken place, it did acknowledge that these kinds of military interactions were dangerous and could lead to war.⁵ The following fall, however, a new Chinese announcement provoked concerns about rising military tensions yet again. China stated that it was imposing an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) across the East China Sea, and the Ministry of Defense called on all aircraft crossing this area to report their intentions to Beijing in advance. Included in the ADIZ were the disputed islands.⁶

This escalating territorial dispute drew global attention to the deepening rift between Tokyo and Beijing. No longer able to negotiate their differences, the leaders of China and Japan turned to others around the world for support. At the United Nations General Assembly in September 2012, Japanese and Chinese leaders vented their frustration—and argued for their interpretation of the dispute. Prime Minister Noda articulated his country’s respect for the Charter of the United Nations, which calls on nations to “settle disputes in a peaceful manner based on international law.”⁷ In contrast, China’s foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, concluded his speech asserting Chinese sovereignty over the Diaoyus by contending that Japan’s national purchase of the islands was an “outright denial of the outcomes of the victory of the world anti-fascist war and poses a grave challenge to the postwar international order.”⁸ According to Yang, Japan “stole” these islands from China. Uninhabited, rocky islands far from the shores of either country thus became the emblem of contest over national identity and global influence. By the end of 2013, Chinese ambassadors in London and Washington, D.C., were writing op-eds condemning Japan as a “revisionist” power with deep “militarist” values. Japan’s ambassadors also took up their pens in an effort to dispute Chinese claims.⁹

Tokyo and Beijing, too, sought to shape Washington’s reaction to their dispute. Tokyo turned to its alliance partner to help deter and dissuade further coercive action by Beijing, and Beijing cautioned Washington to remain neutral. As the confrontation in the East China Sea escalated dangerously, the Obama administration strongly urged both Japan and China to remain calm and to pursue a peaceful resolution of their differences. In October 2010, after Japan and China had their first round of confrontation over the Chinese fishing trawler incident, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reasserted the U.S. position that the Senkaku Islands were covered by article 5 of the bilateral U.S.-Japan security treaty.¹⁰ Then when the tensions escalated dramatically in September 2012, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta traveled to Asia to reiterate the U.S. defense commitment but also to urge restraint by both governments.¹¹ Even Congress weighed in with a joint resolution on the U.S. interests in the dispute.¹² Fear of miscalculation—and an inadvertent clash between Asia’s two largest powers—pushed Washington to urge calm and restraint while also bolstering Japan’s southern air defenses to enhance deterrence. In December 2013, Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Northeast Asia to try to dampen China’s ADIZ ambitions and to reassert the U.S. position that it would not change its own military operations in response.¹³ But Tokyo remained skeptical of Washington’s support in its contest with Beijing.

SINO-JAPANESE TENSIONS

Territorial nationalism is a potent force in domestic politics, and the Japan-China clash over the disputed Senkaku Islands ushered in a particularly dangerous moment in their relationship. Japan’s tensions in its relationship with China did not begin with the island dispute, however, as their difficulties in resolving policy differences had first become evident a decade earlier. Although not all aspects of the complex Sino-Japanese relationship have been contentious, political leaders in Japan have found compromise more and more difficult as popular enthusiasm for China has faltered. Chinese leaders, too, have seemed unable to fulfill agreements or to reach a compromise.

Many factors have contributed to the tensions between Tokyo and Beijing. For more than a decade, the rise in China’s economic influence, coupled with the expansion of its military power, signaled a potentially significant transition of geopolitical power. The anticipation of a much stronger China, possibly hostile to Japan, increasingly fed Japanese perceptions of their relationship with Beijing. China’s neighbors in Asia, particularly U.S. allies, face many challenges in confronting this rising power. Greater proximity, economic dependency, and a new emerging regional balance of power create competing choices. Japan’s difficulties with China suggest the need for a better analysis of these competing influences, and Tokyo’s experience offers a critical case study of the adjustments required of a status quo power.

Another important factor is the continued differences over the legacy of the past and the terms of Japan’s postwar settlement. The San Francisco Peace Treaty, signed in 1951 and restoring Japanese sovereignty in the wake of the United States’ seven-year occupation, did not include Japan’s two “rising” neighbors, the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In 1950, although the Korean War divided the peninsula, a full-fledged government had yet to be formed in the ROK. In addition, the United States recognized the Kuomintang (Guomindang) government of Chiang Kai-shek, and when Beijing fell to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949, the United States and its soon-to-be Cold War ally in Tokyo refused to recognize the newly formed mainland government.¹⁴ It took decades for Japan to conclude separate peace treaties with its neighbors. The Japan-ROK Treaty on Basic Relations was not concluded until 1965, and the Japan-PRC Treaty of Peace and Friendship was not negotiated until after President Richard Nixon’s historic trip to China in 1978. Territorial disputes and other issues related to the postwar settlement were subject to contemporary revisionist politics in all three Northeast Asian nations, and unresolved differences over history and compensation became lightning rods for nationalist sentiment.

The emergence of China as a regional and global power only exacerbated the dissatisfaction with the terms of the postwar peace between Japan and its neighbors. Then in 2012, intensifying difficulties with Seoul and Beijing over island disputes reinforced the idea that Tokyo’s strategic position in Northeast Asia was deteriorating. In 2014, Japan’s territorial disputes over islands with three of its Northeast Asian neighbors—Russia, South Korea, and China—still remained unresolved. The changing Northeast Asian balance of power was gradually creating unease over Tokyo’s defenses.

Finally, tensions over the island dispute gave new urgency to Japan’s debate over military reform, and soon after taking office, the Abe cabinet announced that it would review the previous government’s national defense plan. For more than a decade, Japan’s military budget had not grown, and adjustments to the changing balance of forces in the region had been put off. Equally important, the United States and Japan had not undertaken a strategic review of their alliance since 1997 and still were focused on implementing a post–Cold War realignment of forces. Much had changed in the region since then. Long an advocate of reinterpreting Japan’s constitution to lift some of the constraints on Japan’s military, Abe appointed an advisory committee to review the legal basis for expanding Japan’s right to the use of force in cooperation with other nations, including the United States, and he proposed an increase in Japan’s defense spending. In New York in September 2013, Abe confirmed to an American audience that Japan would not be the “weak link in the regional and global security framework where the U.S. plays a leading role,” yet he had his eyes on China:

We have an immediate neighbor whose military expenditure is at least twice as large as Japan’s and second only to the U.S. defense budget. The country has increased its military expenditures, hardly transparent, by more than 10 percent annually for more than 20 years since 1989. And then my government has increased its defense budget only by zero point eight per cent. So call me, if you want, a right-wing militarist.¹⁵

Abe’s reference to Chinese criticism of his agenda reflected Beijing’s insistence that he was the problem.

While Abe’s views on Japan’s defense and its postwar history have never been in doubt, the acrimony between Tokyo and Beijing has become more and more personal. Beijing has not always been critical of Abe, however. As the newly elected prime minister in the fall of 2006, he was openly welcomed in Seoul and Beijing as the statesman who would repair strained relations and open the way for a “mutually beneficial” relationship. Nonetheless, when he returned to power in 2012, the Japan-China relationship had already deteriorated considerably. Abe did not create these tensions, though, and in fact, he called for high-level talks again with the new Xi Jinping leadership in Beijing. But his diplomatic success in his first term in office did not translate into success in his second term.

A Decade of Diplomatic Strain

Signs of a changing bilateral relationship already were evident at the turn of the century.¹⁶ Over the next decade, repeated frictions between Tokyo and Beijing on a variety of policy problems reflected the growing popular concern over China’s influence, and the diplomatic relationship swung from confrontation to reconciliation and back again.¹⁷

With each problem, the Japanese government seemed increasingly unable to resolve its differences with Beijing. Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichirō (2001–2006) presided over roughly half the decade of strain between Tokyo and Japan, and for a time, Beijing attributed many of these difficulties to him. Moreover, Koizumi’s insistence on visiting the controversial Yasukuni Shrine was seen as the primary cause of China’s criticism of Japan. When Koizumi stepped down, diplomats in Beijing and Tokyo unveiled a sophisticated diplomatic blueprint of high-level summitry designed to thaw the chill of the Koizumi years,¹⁸ and it was Abe who led the Japanese effort to repair relations. The culmination in May 2008 was Hu Jintao’s visit to Japan, the first in a decade by a Chinese president. Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo, son of the prime minister who had welcomed Deng Xiaoping on his first visit to Tokyo in 1978, welcomed Hu and proudly announced their new vision for “mutually beneficial relations based on common strategic interests.”¹⁹

But this high-level diplomacy did not end the difficulties in the Japan-China relationship. New issues drew public criticism. Even after the Hu-Fukuda summit in 2008, the two governments continued to struggle to manage Japanese fears over poisoned frozen dumplings imported from China. Consumers boycotted Chinese goods, and the criminal investigation of the incident resulted in tense recriminations from both governments. In 2010, a Chinese fishing trawler in waters near the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands created the worst diplomatic standoff between Tokyo and Beijing since normalization. Popular animosity in both countries ratcheted upward as their political leaders feuded openly. After the two-week confrontation ended and tempers cooled, diplomats began yet again to return to the diplomacy of reconciliation, but with little progress. Again in 2012 the two countries were at odds over their island dispute. In mid-August, Chinese activists landed on the Senkakus; the Noda cabinet followed through on its purchase of the islands from their owner; and widespread anti-Japanese demonstrations followed in China. Compared with the fishing trawler incident, tensions between Beijing and Tokyo escalated dangerously as popular antagonisms soared, and even the two militaries became engaged. The carefully orchestrated diplomatic effort to steady the Japan-China relationship had failed.

At home, the Japanese were struggling to find a new approach to governance, and this affected their diplomacy with China as well. Japan was handicapped by its leaders’ inability to stay in office long enough to develop a rapport with their Chinese counterparts. Japan’s protracted political transition, which began in the early 1990s with the breakup of the conservative LDP, left the Japanese people feeling less confident in their own government. With the notable exception of Koizumi’s five-year tenure, Japan’s prime ministers changed virtually every year. Then in 2009, Japanese voter...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents 
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• 1. Contending with China
• 2. Diplomacy and Domestic Interests
• 3. Japan’s Imperial Veterans
• 4. A Shared Maritime Boundary
• 5. Food Safety
• 6. Island Defense
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index