Some Brighter Anecdotes about Japan and Security

So, to use that awful academic word, I have problematized the US-Japan relationship in my last two anecdote posts. Mainly, I wanted to give a brief overview of how the Japanese l talked with seemed to see the defensive alliance with the US as well as their own domestic concerns about their developing role in international security. Here, I want to relate some experiences that I think point toward a strong US-Japan relationship for the future.

First, whatever else the Japanese remember about their war with us, they have a powerful memory of the US feeding them and helping them rebuild their nation after they surrendered. The Japanese people were quite literally starving by the beginning of August 1945. I have had elderly Japanese people, complete strangers, come up to me in the street, ask me if I was American, and then thank me for feeding them after the war. I was clearly a couple of generations younger than them, so there was no possibility they thought I had actually been there in 1945. They remember their debts, even debts to a former enemy.

Their nation has prospered under the US security umbrella and while they may complain about one aspect or another of the relationship, they are grateful for that, too. It's been good for both nations and they know it.

It may seem much less important, but the Japanese in their teens and twenties and thirties (more than a decade ago now) seemed overall to have a positive image of the US. American music and movies are perennially popular there. Sure, they have criticisms of us (as we have of them), but it doesn't seem to blunt their enjoyment of American culture. If anything, I was typically a bit of a disappointment to them because I was mainly interested in doing traditional Japanese things. I would have been much more popular if I'd played tennis or golf.

Another positive development in Japan seems to be, if my sources are correct, that Marxism appears to be on the wane there, even while it is blossoming in the US. I can't walk across a US campus without tripping on a Marxist and the SDA is booming, but the fall of the Soviet Union seems to have begun a slow retreat from Marxism in the Japanese academy and society more broadly. The Japanese Communist Party is also slowly slipping, with numbers decreasing steadily since about 2014. These are good signs.

I hesitate to offer specific suggestions for improving the relationship in the ways we might want because I have been out of the field for so long and really don't know the current situation. That said, I will say that broadly speaking there is a strong foundation on the Japanese side for our two nations to cooperate to an even greater degree than we have been. At this point, I would simply make the maybe banal suggestions that, one, some sensitivity to how we approach changes in matters of security, being mindful of the domestic issues surrounding Article 9, would be wise. And, two, it's good to keep in mind that honor remains important to them. Yes, they like money and the things it buys, but there is still a little bit of samurai ethos in them, even the pacifists.

###

Postscript: Another good sign is the LDP is usually in power and one of its goals is amending Article 9. It takes a 2/3 majority in both the lower and upper houses of parliament to accomplish that, so the problem for a long time now has been the LDP hasn't ever gotten those numbers. Right now, they have 2/3s in the lower house, but, even with their coalition partner, are about 40 or so short in the upper house. For some reason I just assume everyone knows this; the LDP have been in the majority since 1955 with two brief lapses: 1993-96 and 2009-12. So, they're almost always in power.