Over The Borderline Of Stupid

Ceci est un Japon

Yesterday the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) announced the results of the screening (kentei) of social science textbooks . The screening, which is for textbooks to be used in the nation's middle and high schools beginning April 2016, found 102 of 104 textbooks passed the new criteria established this past January -- a rather stunning display of quickstep obedience. (Link)

What is making this story newsworthy is the lockstep acceptance by book publishers of a word, that word being koyu (固有), usually translated as "inherent" -- as in the following:

All social studies textbooks for middle school students will include descriptions of the Takeshima islets and the Senkaku Islands as "territories inherently belonging to Japan," among other similar phrases, according to the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry.

By saying that not just the Senkaku Islands, where Japan has administrative control, but Dokdo and the Southern Kuriles, where it does not, are all "inherent" territories, the government of Japan is saying that no deals can be struck as regards the final sovereignty of any of these territories and territorial waters.

Which, if you are in the business of solving problems and working toward better tomorrows, which is sort of what democratic governments are supposed to be doing, most of the time (thank you, Immanuel Kant) would be an INCREDIBLY STUPID THING TO INSIST IS YOUR POSITION.

Let us say a Chinese, Russian or South Korean diplomat meets her counterpart in Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The conversation between the two will have to go something like this:

Japanese Diplomat - "I am sorry, but we have nothing to discuss on the matter of sovereignty. The territories are Japanese. End of discussion."

which will most likely be immediately followed by a:

"Hey, wait, where are you going? Stop, stop! I am supposed to sit down with you and discuss things!"

One of the great characteristics of Japanese diplomacy, at least until recently, was the careful consideration done of the potential repercussions of a statement. Whereas Russian or Chinese diplomats (I cannot speak about the ROK diplomatic corps) can be trusted to utter provocative, extremist nonsense, Japanese diplomats have prided themselves on locutions that almost-but-not-quite stake out a position -- a stance that reflects both national aspirations AND reality.

These new criteria claiming that Takeshima, all of the Northern Territories and the Senkakus are all inherent territories -- which is to say that letting go of even a square millimeter of them would diminish Japan as an entity -- mark a surrender to the surreal.

Any deal on control of the Senkakus, on Dokdo, on the Southern Kuriles would be just that: a deal. A deal presupposes compromise and compromises means sacrifice. If one states at the outset that no sacrifice is possible -- "It's either my way or the highway, amigo" -- then one is just being an ass and a damned dangerous one too.

A declaration of a standard of "negotiations without sacrifice" is an example of the threat highlighted by Professor Alexis Dudden in her widely misunderstood op-ed for The New York Times, "The Shape of Japan to Come" (Link). Many reading the op-ed thought Dr. Dudden was issuing a warning that the Abe government was positioning Japan for a military conquest/occupation of disputed territories and territorial waters. Calling Mr. Abe's views "revanchist" did little to discourage such an interpretation.

What Dr. Dudden was trying to convey was likely a more limited warning -- that the Abe administration is leaving reality behind, promising not only to do things it has no intention of doing (the usual business of politics) but also things it cannot possibly do. A government that promises its citizens they are all going to Heaven (a paraphrase of the reaction of one my colleagues to Abe's speech to the Diet of 10 September 2007, delivered two days before he announced his resignation) is not likely to be a helpful international actor, nor a particularly reliable one.

That MEXT officials (and their counterparts in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) want to claim for themselves that the impossible is true is bad. That they should want, through the kentei process (and in MOFA's case, through the intimidation of non-Japanese journalists) to insist that everyone shares their grand delusions, is idiocy.


Later - Thanks to reader AO for quickly catching my superfluous insertion of a decade.

A Chinese Nightmare, Post-Sochi

VLADIVOSTOK - When Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan sat down last Thursday with President Geun-hye Park at the finals of women's figure skating in Sochi, Russia, the physical and emotional distance between the two leaders seemed an illustration of the freeze in relations between the two countries. Mr. Abe and President Park sat apart, acknowledging each other's presence only once at the start of the evening. Japan First Lady Akie Abe, a fan of Korean culture and a speaker of the Korean language, sat in between the two leaders, eagerly and energetically chatting with the South Korean leader in a manner that made the frostiness between President Park and Prime Minister Abe all the more glaring.

The lack of interaction between President Park and Mr. Abe last week made yesterday's announcement of a broad-based, multilateral agreement on East Asian territorial issues all the more unexpected. Foreign ministers of Japan, South Korea, Russia and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, meeting in this frigid Pacific port, held a news conference outlining an intricate plan for countries in the region to settle longstanding territorial disputes in a wave of mutual recognitions of each other’s territorial claims.

"President Park and Mr. Abe put on an incredible show on Thursday night, better perhaps than the two young ladies," quipped one of President Park's advisers, who asked to remain anonymous. "The two governments had already cut the deal on Dokdo recognition, ending the feud. The two leaders showed no warmth at all toward each in order to keep the whole deal under wraps."

Though the details are not fully hammered out regarding Japanese rights on the northernmost of the two islands the Russians call the Southern Kuriles and the Japanese call their Northern Territories, the basic outlines of yesterday's agreements are:

- Russia will return to Japan of the islands of Shikotan and Habomai, seized by Soviet forces in 1945. Russia will gain sovereignty over the two remaining islands currently under dispute, with former Japanese residents of the islands and their descendants winning special extraterritorial rights of residency and self-rule on the islands.

- Japan and Russia will sign a peace treaty, officially ending World War II.

- Japan will recognize of South Korean sovereignty over islets known as Dokdo, which the Japanese call Takeshima. In return, the South Korea government promises to suspend all official efforts to change the name of the sea in which Dokdo is located from "Sea of Japan" to "East Sea."

- Russia, South Korea and the United States will recognize Japanese sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands, which China and the government of Taiwan both claim.

The responses of the Chinese government to the declaration on the Senkakus, which Chinese call the Diaoyu Islands, have been confusion, disbelief and anger. Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin, China's senior representative at the Vladivostok talks after the departure of Foreign Minister Wang Yi two days ago, had no prepared statement, leaving the conference hall in a rush with reporters trailing in his wake. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei, in a hastily arranged news conference in Beijing, declared, "Japan does not have sovereignty over the Diaoyu Islands and no agreement among outsider nations can change this reality. The perfidy of today's illegitimate acts will reverberate through history but will never break China's bond to its sovereign territories."

"China overplayed its hand and absented itself from efforts to find a solution," explained a senior U.S. official, speaking on background. "The declaration of the East China Sea air defense zone in November got everyone's attention, making it clear that just leaving sovereignty issues in limbo was just going to continue to generate threats to everyone's security. Once the ball started rolling on the need for mutual recognitions and mutual sacrifices, the negotiations gained unstoppable momentum, bringing us to the agreement we have today."

The broad-based agreement, which the ministers and Secretary Kerry will be taking back to their capitals for approval...

No Man's Lands - A Thought

I attended a noon luncheon at the Foreign Correspondent's Club of Japan featuring presentations by Katsuhiko Togo, a renowned and controversial former Director-General of the Treaties Bureau (where only the absolutely brightest career diplomats serve) and Park Il, professor at Osaka City University.  Their presentations focused on the Dokdo/Takeshima dispute and possible ways the South Korean and Japanese governments can climb down from their current enervated excited states.

Among the proposals floated by Mr. Togo was a new general code of  conduct for all of the players in Japan's territorial disputes.  Insistence that no territorial dispute exists over such-and-such a disputed territory, thus preventing the two governments even having discussions over the territories, should be abandoned.  "There is no territorial dispute so we have nothing to talk about" is the attitude adopted by South Korea over Dokdo/Takeshima and Russia over the Southern Kuriles/Northern Territories.  It is the brick wall Japan's diplomats or politicians run into when they try to engage their counterparts in discussions over these islands.

This stance is also the one taken by Japan over the Senkakus.  Under Togo's proposal, Japan would abandon its insistence that the Senkakus are indisputably Japanese territory, allowing discussion with the Chinese, Taiwanese and Hong Kong governments over the status of the islands.

Such an approach would be both intellectually consistent and absolutely wrong.  Opening up the sovereignty over the Senkakus to discussion thows away one of Japan's ace cards.

The Senkakus are indisputably Japanese territory. We know this by inference.

How? Let us take a tour around the Pacific.

Name: Clipperton Island
Controlling State: France
Population: 0
Garrison soldiers: 0
Nearest inhabited land: Mexico

Name: Baker Island
Controlling State: U.S.A.
Population: 0
Garrison soldiers: 0
Nearest inhabited land: U.S.A., Australia

Name: Minamitorishima
Controlling State: Japan
Population: 0
Garrison soldiers: 0
Nearest inhabited land: Northern Marianas Islands, Wake Island (U.S.A.)

The sovereignty of none of these islands is contested. They are also not protected by standing forces, though a standby barracks was constructed on Minamitorishima in 2011.

Call me off my rocker -- but a sure way to indicate a lack of confidence over one's hold upon a Pacific island is to put soldiers on it or colonize it. By contrast, by leaving an island or a set of islands alone, allowing no inhabitants, unapproved visitors or soldiers on it or them, the more confidence you can exude that your claim is valid.

Why then put the Senkakus on a par with the heavily militarized Dokto/Takeshima, Southern Kuriles/Northern Territories, and the garrisoned islands of the Spratlys and the Paracels?


Later - Togo-sensei has published a written treatment of ideas regarding Japan's three major territorial disputes on the NBR website:

"Japan’s Territorial Problem: The Northern Territories, Takeshima, and the Senkaku Islands" (Link)

Later still - Someone has do a history of the Togo family, though it is difficult to imagine that Togo-sensei himself does not have already have a thick manuscript and the support documents in a fire-proof safe at home. If there were ever a "well, you do not see that every day" story, the saga of the Togo family is it.

Your Serve, Region

Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko gave a live press conference last night, outlining what his government is doing regarding the territorial disputes with the Republic of Korea over Dokdo and China/Taiwan/Hong Kong over the Senkakus. (J)

The approach the Noda government will take is quite simple: it will assert its claims, which it has heretofore done quietly, mostly in the form of including the disputed territories in official maps, wherever appropriate in its interactions with the international community, leaving international opinion to judge the validity of Russian, South Korean and Chinese/Taiwanese behavior.

This approach is in line with the standard procedures of normal democratic states. Authoritarian regimes can enforce, as Deng Xiaoping suggested, the sweeping of competing claims under the rug for later, wiser generations to resolve, with the obvious postscript: "In the meantime, let's stay in power by letting our people make money." Democratic states cannot -- voters like problems resolved in clean, simple and tidy ways.

Adjusting to the new stance will lead to some fumbling. Even foreign policy experts will not "get it" -- see this CNN op-ed by Jimbo Ken, where he argues at the beginning that status quo policies are no longer operative, only to argue at the end that the conduct of relations between Japan and China needs the kinds of personal relations that lubricated and protected the status quo approach.

However, the chances of the new assertiveness' succeeding in freezing further escalation of territorial disputes are at least 50-50. All the governments in the region ex Japan remain at least semi-authorian -- the exception being Taiwan, which has opted out of the current round of the fighting over the Senkakus despite being led by a man whose law degree is based upon studies of Chinese claims in the East China Sea (E and E). The semi-authoritarian regimes can still rely upon considerable powers of persuasion to repress populist behavior - if the regime in question wants to do so. China has deployed both its 50-cent Party of Web commentators and its police forces (E) in a short-circuiting of anti-Japanese mob action in relation to the visit of Hong Kong activists to the Senkakus. That the South Korean president has gone in the other direction, choosing to heighten regional tensions rather than use his presidential powers to tamp them down, over a territory where South Korea has dug-in military forces, is...to be honest, not something I do want to delve into right now because it will be, inshallah, discussed in a future op-ed for Al-Jazeera.

The takeaway from last night's speech is that the balls are now in the courts of the nations surrounding Japan. The government of this blessed land is not going to keep quiet, as was demonstrated in the most recent Defense White Paper where the government put it writing That Which Must Not Be Said: that the civilian government of China and the People's Liberation Army may not be reading from the same piece of sheet music.

It will be up to the governments in the region, coping with their own internal instabilities and tensions, to come up with new narratives to cope with Mr. Noda's New Reality.