Encouraging Asian democracies to jointly stand up for themselves against China turns out to be trickier than we’d hoped, as fast-chilling relations between South Korea and Japan demonstrate.
On Tuesday, the parliament in Seoul voted unanimously to denounce Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s recent visit to a Shinto shrine. It was just the latest escalation in the growing crisis following Abe’s trip to Yasukuni Shrine, which controversially honors several war criminals.
Seoul’s anger is understandable: Korea — like Japan’s other neighbors — suffered tremendously under Tokyo’s brutal aggression before and during World War II.
Abe’s visit to Yasukuni (and another yesterday by one of his Cabinet ministers) raises ugly memories and deep passions across the region.
On Monday, a Chinese foreign-ministry spokesman denounced Japan’s “hypocrisy,” saying that the shrine visit renders Abe no longer welcome in the People’s Republic. That puts on deep ice Abe’s plans for a Beijing summit to hash out territorial disputes with China and to tighten commerce with Japan’s largest trading partner.
The crazies of North Korea chimed in as well, calling the Yasukuni visit a declaration of war. (Of course, if Abe sent fresh flowers to Kim Jong-un, Pyongyang might well denounce that as an act of war.)
With one act, in other words, Abe managed to get the whole region mad at him. And Washington, too: Our Tokyo embassy said it was “disappointed.” (UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, himself a Korean who grew up in the post-World War II era, also implicitly condemned Abe.)
Why? A quick glance at history:
There are no bones buried in Yasukuni; it simply enshrines the spirits of war veterans. Back in 1978, a new head priest at the shrine formally added the souls of 14 Class A war criminals (as determined by the postwar International Military Tribunal for the Far East), including that of Gen. Hideki Tojo, the prime minister infamous for Pearl Harbor.
Also enshrined there: the soul of Nobusuke Kishi, who has also been accused of war crimes related to his time at the Commerce Ministry in the 1940s. As prime minister of a now-democratic Japan a decade later, however, Kishi was instrumental in setting up the defense and other treaties that turned Japan into America’s most reliable ally in the region.
And Abe, Japan’s current prime minister, is Kishi’s grandson.
A reformer with a strong nationalist streak, he’d wanted to visit Yasukuni during his previous premiership nearly a decade ago — but, under strong US pressure, relented. Tokyo sources tell me he’s regretted that decision ever since.
When elected prime minister again a year ago, Abe immediately started working on Japan’s stagnant economy, cutting government spending and reforming staid institutions. Beyond “Abenomics,” he also stood up to an increasingly expansionist China — especially as Beijing provocatively and unilaterally recently moved toward annexing disputed islands that Japan has long administered.
In other words, Japan is experiencing a revival of long-dormant nationalist emotions just as China is moving to translate its economic rise to military pressure across the region. The clashing nationalistic trends feed each other.
The Obama administration, with zero desire to get involved in military clashes in Asia (or anywhere else), has encouraged China’s neighbors to invest in their own militaries and fend for themselves.
But Abe’s nationalist streak is a natural way to convince Japanese taxpayers to pay more for defense — and, as much as we hate it, a natural part of that nationalism is visiting a national shrine for those who died in military service going back centuries.
(For the record: Abe says his Yasukuni visit wasn’t designed to promote historical revision, but to reassure the world that Japan must never return to war. A Tokyo official also tells me the government isn’t trying to shift from Abenomics to nationalism.)
Abe, I’m told, was hoping he could finally visit the shrine (and his grandfather’s spirit) once and for all, and that his neighbors would calm after the inevitable initial furor. Early signs suggest he miscalculated.
For the United States, the problem is that the growing flap threatens a cornerstone of our regional policy: The Obama administration, wisely and diligently, has worked to forge an alliance of Asian democracies, centered on Japan and South Korea, to confront China’s renewed aggression.
But, as a Seoul diplomat tells me in typical understatement, “Abe’s visit to the shrine certainly doesn’t help Japan’s relationship with neighbors, as well as that with the United States.”
Getting Seoul and Tokyo back to speaking terms could be one of Team Obama’s most important 2014 diplomatic challenges.