No Mr. Abe, You And China Together Are Still Not Enough

Interesting figures in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun this morning:

Q: Shall the Constitution be reinterpreted in order to make it possible to exercise the right of collective self-defense?

Agree 28%
Disagree 51%

Q: Should their be preparations be brought forward on the legal basis for [ having the Self Defense Forces involvement] so-called gray-zone incidents?

Should be 68%
Should not be 13%

Q: Should SDF units participating in peacekeeping activities be allowed to rush to the armed defense (kaketsuke keigo) of other peacekeeper and/or civilians?

Allowed 47%
Not allowed 34%

Q: Is it necessary to invoke the right collective self-defense?

Necessary 37%
Not necessary 47%

A remarkably level-headed set of numbers, no? The voters in this poll clearly want the government to have a capacity to deploy the SDF in situations where opponents are in plain clothes but way too much for constabulary forces like the Japan Coast Guard to handle, such as trawler-fulls of Chinese special forces disguised as fishermen landing on the Senkakus. They are also generally in favor of a partial normalization of the behavior of Japanese forces in peacekeeping operations, making the SDF contingent valuable as a military, rather than just a logistics force.

At the same time, the voters are at best ambivalent about invoking the right of collective self defense per se. They are also deeply skeptical about reinterpretation, the Constitutional bugbear that Prime Minister Abe's advisors and councils failed to think through until this year.

The error as regards reinterpretation was one of language and group think -- too few people involved in a discussion of a subject using the same limited vocabulary. For the reformers in Japan's defense establishment, all the Cabinet had to do was interpret (kaishaku) the Constitution in a new way. It did not dawn upon them that to undo a previous determination of unconstitutionality required reinterpretation (kaishaku o henko) -- which only the Supreme Court or a constitutional amendment can do.

Meanwhile, on the subject of meeting and beating the threats to the nation, the Chinese air force and Chinese official news organs this weekend sought to regale us with their well-known talents for physical comedy Link) and satire. (Link).

Such kidders.

Despite these shenanigans on the part of the powers that be in China which could lead to a sudden to dump the 1946 Constitution, the Japanese public keeps its eyes on the edifice of their democratic form of government and the foundations of the rule of law and popular sovereignty.

Pretty impressive, no?

Pan-Asianism All Over Again

For the academic with tenure: the long essay comparing the tone of 1920s and 1930s Japanese Pan-Asianist writings with very kind, well-meaning predictions like this:

Asia will develop a greater sense of regional awareness and cohesion. The region is still compartmentalised into Northeast, Southeast, South, Central and West Asia. But the region’s current collaborative efforts — such as the ASEAN-Plus formula, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation — will gradually lead it towards a greater level of pan-Asian cooperation.

(Link)

Eeek! I certainly hope not. I have seen this movie before and the ending is a downer.

Dr. Yang must be negotiating complex  intellectual mine fields. It must be exhausting to try to at once offer a positive message and stay within the boundaries of what is acceptable to the Beijing regime and its self-proclaimed defenders. The essay must be understood in those terms, as a chip tossed into an ocean of loaded code words and approvable poses, rather that just a justification for Chinese disruption of international institutions and norms behind a false front of making the global commons more fair and reflective of cultural difference.

Perhaps forgiveness can be extended in two directions: to Chinese intellectuals in this era of expansion who labor under the thumb of capricious, self-serving authoritarianism and to Japanese intellectuals of the pre-defeat era who faced a parallel situation.

100 Japanese Public Intellectuals List - Numbers 51-70

Thanks to commenters and some suggestions from a friend, I have a further twenty names for the master list of 100 currently active public intellectuals.

51-60
Noguchi Yukio
Yonekura Sei'ichirō
Nonaka Ikujirō
Tanaka Naoki
Itō Takatoshi
Itō Motoshige
Kang Sangjung
Mori Tatsuya
Takahashi Tetsuya
Karatani Kojin

61-70
Hosaka Masayasu
Tanaka Hitoshi
Soeya Yoshihide
Tachibana Takashi
Hata Ikuhiko
Okonogi Masao
Ebata Kensuke
Tahara Sōichirō Murakami Haruki
Komori Yoshihisa
Tamamoto Masaharu


I include Tamamoto-san on a tentative basis. Having met him on several occasions, I have a personal liking for him. He has gone through hell because of the machinations of his nemesis Komori. However, I have not read anything recent work by him published in Japanese. If the suggestor could send me a URL, I would be much obliged.

Some persons suggested Ozawa Ichirō and Ishiba Shigeru. While Ozawa and Ishiba and others politicians like Yosano Kaoru do write significant thought pieces and participate in taidan (discussion) works, their influence grows out of their positions in the political firmament, not necessarily the power of their ideas. Ishihara Shintarō and Inose Naoki, by contrast, established themselves as literary figures before becoming political players.

100 Japanese Public Intellectuals List - A First Fifty

Over at Observing Japan, Tobias Harris reports on a contest trying to select the top 20 of the world's public intellectuals from out of a list 100 candidates.

Not surprisingly, the list of candidates contains not a single Japanese name -- though 5 Indian citizens and 5 Chinese made the list.

In the comments section of the post, I proposed producing a list of the 100 top public intellectuals in Japan--a task I lack the skills to complete, even at swordpoint.

As an exercise, however, I have produced an initial list of fifty names.

My criteria are not terribly strict--the persons selected must be

- currently active

- well-known to the public

- commenting on current affairs and society

(I love Miyazaki Hayao as an artist. His work frequently contains strong political and social messages. However, he is too much the recluse and too oblique in his criticism to be classed a public intellectual)

- have earned their reputation through published work or activities other than just the carrying out of the duties of a Japanese national government or local government official

The last criteria is convoluted. I wanted to keep Ishihara Shintarō and Inose Naoki on the list--for even though the two of them are the Governor and Vice-Governor of Tokyo, their reputations as maverick thinkers and writers preceed their terms of public service. I also wanted to keep Inoguchi Kuniko on the list--in part because the list suffers from a terrible dearth of prominent women.

I have also excluded active corporate executives and the heads of corporate lobbying organizations. I would appreciate any reasonable explanation for my having done this.

I would appreciate suggestions of further names, particularly from the Davids if they could spare a moment on writers and thinkers in art and music worlds and from Okumura Jun on domestic politics or administration.


Fifty Japanese Public Intellectuals of Note

1-10
Ishihara Shintarō
Inose Naoki
Yamauchi Masayuki
Nakanishi Terumasa
Yayama Tarō
Sakakibara Eisuke
Satō Masaru
Gyōten Toyo'o (Toyoo Gyohten)
Sakaiya Taiichi
Sakurai Yoshiko

11-20
Setouchi Jakuchō
Iokibe Makoto
Nakanishi Hiroshi
Tanaka Akihiko
Kitaoka Shin'ichi
Umeda Mochio
Ōe Kenzaburō
Inoguchi Kuniko
Tahara Sōichirō
Takenaka Heizō

21-30
Ōmae Ken'ichi
Kobayashi Yoshinori
Takemura Ken'ichi
Morimoto Satoshi
Funabashi Yōichi
Hama Noriko
Kawamoto Yuko
Ogata Sadako
Shimada Haruo
Katō Hiroshi

31-40
Nishio Kanji
Nishibe Susumu
Izumi Hajime
Fujiwara Masahiko
Yōrō Takeshi
Hinohara Shigeaki
Murakami Ryū
Uchida Tatsuru
Ikeda Nobuo
Kusaka Kimindo

41-50
Ando Tadao
Kokubun Ryōsei
Yanai Shunji
Okazaki Hisahiko
Sassa Atsuyuki
Inoguchi Takashi
Miyazaki Tetsuya
Miyadai Shinji
Kayama Rika
Katsuya Masahiko