Category: Japan

As the Japanese originally speculated, Japanese leftist extremists were behind the last week’s Camp Zama explosion:

The same group that claimed responsibility for a 2002 blast near Camp Zama said it also was responsible for the explosions reported near the base last week, local Japanese police said.

A group calling itself the “Revolutionary Army” sent letters to several Japanese media outlets in Tokyo on Saturday claiming responsibility for an incident in which a projectile was found on the base, Zama city police official said. The police believe the group is connected to Kakuryokyo, a leftist extremist group, he said.

In the letter, the group said it is opposed to relocating the Army’s new headquarters to Camp Zama, which was agreed upon last year by the United States and Japan as part of an overall plan to realign U.S. military forces in Japan, the official said. He said the group also wants to stop Vice President Dick Cheney’s visit to Japan this week.

Though Japanese authorities claimed from the beginning of this story that Japanese leftists were probably behind the explosion, it didn’t stop the US media from making claims of a possible Al Qaida attack.  The US media doing yet more scare mongering.

What is kind of interesting about this leftist attack was that Chirol at Coming Anarchy just had a post that discussed leftist terrorism.  Leftist extremism is on the rise and Japan has a long history of leftist extremism, namely the Japanese Red Army that was responsible for a variety of terror attacks in the 1970’s and 1980’s. 

A US military installation in Japan was threatened with a small explosion outside the camp:

A small explosion occurred outside a U.S. Army base south of Tokyo late Monday, police and military officials said. A Japanese news report said police suspected an attempted attack on the base.

The Army was investigating the blast, said an official at Camp Zama who spoke on condition of anonymity, adding that there were no reports of injuries or damage.

"A small explosion was heard in the vicinity of the base," said Maj. David Smith, a Pentagon spokesman in Washington D.C. "It did not occur on the base."

Kyodo News agency reported that police had found a metal tube thought to be used as a launcher of a rocket from a nearby park. Investigators suspected guerrillas in the attack, the report said.

This isn’t the first time leftists have targeted a US military installation in Japan:

In 2002, two blasts were heard outside Camp Zama, and Japanese police found a metal projectile and a crude mortar made from a metal pipe nearby. Investigators blamed radical guerrillas for the explosions, which caused no injuries.

Leftist extremists in Japan have used projectile launchers against targets related to the U.S. military or on sites connected to the royal family. The attacks are usually more symbolic than dangerous, and injuries or significant damage are rare.

It appears it is probably the same leftist group judging by the device used.  As much as I hate South Korea’s fifth column, at least they have resorted to explosive yet, they appear content attacking people with sharpened bamboo spears and rocks. 

Ampontan suggests that maybe there is a rise of silent majority between Japan and Korea that get along:

It might be well to keep that in mind the next time you read or hear a superficial comment in the media taking it as given that the citizens of both countries get along like cats and dogs (or dogs and monkeys, as they say in Japan). Indeed, I suspect this is just another facile storyline pushed by the media to maintain interest in their own product, or sloppy work by third-country media sources too lazy to look for the real story. The media have lost their credibility in every other area, so there’s no reason to think they have any here, either.

In fact, what we may be seeing is the emergence of a new Silent Majority—the people of South Korea and Japan who actually get on well with each other!

I tend to think that there isn’t a rise of a silent majority in Korea that gets along with Japan because the majority that gets along with Japan has always been there.  The vast majority of Koreans aren’t flag eaters, bee stompers, finger choppers, or a host of other acts that ultra-Korean nationalists have done in the past to show their anti-Japanese feelings.  Japanese tourists can be seen all over Korea and nobody bothers them likewise with Korean tourists that visit Japan where no one bothers them either.  However, just because Koreans get along with the Japanese doesn’t mean they like them.  The vast majority of Koreans I have met don’t like the Japanese, but have no problems with visiting Japan or even working there for that matter.  Most Korean let there kids watch Japanese animation and on the streets of Seoul you can even see more Japanese cars than in the past.  Despite media claims that would lead you to believe that Koreans hate the Japanese; Koreans don’t hate the Japanese, but they don’t like them either. 

Stories like this just go to show that not all things are bad between Korea and Japan:

Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko appeared to be emotionally affected at the screening on Friday of a new film about a South Korean student who was killed by an oncoming train in 2001 as he tried to rescue a drunken stranger at a Tokyo station.At a preview in Tokyo on the sixth anniversary of the death of 26-year-old Lee Su Hyon, the imperial couple both seemed to be moved as the film reached its finale where the main character is killed.

Lee’s parents also attended the screening.

“Anata wo Wasurenai” (We Will Not Forget You), the latest Japan-South Korean film collaboration which will premier across Japan on Saturday, depicts a young South Korean man and his love for a Japanese girl in Tokyo and is interlaced with the complex feelings South Koreans have about Japan, their former colonial occupier.

Empress Michiko has a personal involvement in the real story. In November 2001, she happened to meet with Lee’s parents at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo while they were on a tour.

You have to love campaign promises:

Former Prime Minister Goh Kun is considering making the construction of an undersea tunnel linking South Korea and Japan as a key campaign pledge for the Dec. 19 presidential election, Goh’s aides said on Sunday.

The plan is construed as part of the presidential hopeful’s attempt to counter campaign pledges ranging from economic development to large-scale construction projects offered by other high-profile contenders such as former Seoul Mayor Lee Myung-bak and Rep. Park Geun-hye, former chairwoman of the main opposition Grand National Party (GNP).

“An advisory group for Goh recently recommended the undersea tunnel project. But it has not been adopted as an official campaign promise yet,” a spokesman for Goh’s election camp was quoted as saying by the Yonhap News Agency.

First of all, is it even feasible to dig a tunnel to Japan? The Korea Strait is roughly about 200 kilometers wide between Japan from South Korea which means this tunnel would be a much longer than the tunnel under the English Channel which is 34 kilometers long. Also the waters of the Korea Strait are twice as deep as the waters that separate France and England thus making the construction of the Korea Strait tunnel that much more difficult. Plus is building a tunnel across a major fault line in a earthquake prone area really a great idea?

Secondly, shouldn’t you first find out if the Japanese even want a tunnel from Korea going to Japan? Can you imagine all the Korean left hand drive vehicles flooding into Japan’s roads that use right hand drive vehicles that drive on the left? The car insurance rates for everyone living in Kyushu would sky rocket. Could you imagine what would happen the first time ajushi gets into a car accident with a Japanese driver and tries to beat him up as is often done in Korea? I think it is best to keep the cars in Korea. Plus I’m assuming the Korean government would expect Japan to help pay for the tunnel. Is it worth it for them to finance this tunnel? It seems like Korea has more to gain from this tunnel than Japan.

There are so many obvious questions about the feasibility of this tunnel it is just amazing that a Korean presidential candidate is even contemplating making this a campaign promise, but that is the beauty of the Korean presidential system; it is just one five year term so you can make all the campaign promises you want, no matter how outrageous, and not worry about keeping them because you don’t have to worry about reelection.

Korean families are now suing the Yasukuni Shrine in Japan in order to remove the names of 21,000 Koreans enshrined there for their war time service to imperial Japan during World War II:

Families of Koreans who died while serving as part of the Japanese military during World War II are planning to sue the group that runs the Yasukuni Shrine, considered a symbol of Japan’s war of aggression. The families demanding that memorial tablets of their ancestors and relatives be removed from the shrine.

This is believed to mark the first time Koreans have sued the shrine itself instead of the Japanese government to have family members’ memorial tablets removed.

The group “Anti-Yasukuni Joint Action” announced that it is suing on behalf of the 21,000 Koreans memorialized in Yasukuni, and that it plans to file the suit at Tokyo District Court on the anniversary of the March 1 independence campaign of 1919. The group says it is going to announce the move in a press conference on Friday, December 8, the 64th anniversary of the outbreak of the Pacific War.

One of the little known facts of World War II is the number of Koreans that served in the Imperial Japanese military.  Korean scholars today say those who served were forced to fight in the Japanese military against their will.  This is true in some cases but as was evident by the conviction of a number of Koreans for war crimes after World War II many did serve freely.

So that brings me to the point I want to make, is that if there are Koreans that did serve freely and believed in the Japanese cause, then what’s wrong with them being enshrined at Yasukuni?  Isn’t that what they would have wanted if they believed enough in the Japanese cause to die for it?  That leads me to my next point of how will a court be able to tell the difference between Koreans who served freely and those who were forced into the military in able to determine who should be removed from the shrine?  Plus can relatives legally speak for what the deceased would have wanted in the first place?  This is also taking for granted that the court can even remove the names because Yasukuni is a private shrine and not funded or operated by the government.

Common sense tells me that if immediate family members to the deceased want the name removed then they should remove it, but for a few families to demand that all 21,000 names be removed from Yasukuni seems like a stretch to me.  Imagine if a few families from an ethnic minority in America sued to have all people of that minority removed from the Vietnam War Memorial?  It wouldn’t happen; just like in Japan I don’t see court ordering the removal of any names from Yasukuni either.

However, I did find this paragraph from the article very interesting:

The Korean branch of the anti-Yasukuni group plans to hold an “East Asian Peace Festival” next year for human rights and peace activists from Korea, Taiwan, and Japan in Tokyo next year, and organize a scholarly meeting in New York to make the international community aware of “how Yasukuni is against civilization and peace” before taking its case to the UN Human Rights Commission.

What I find it interesting that this Korean group thinks Yasukuni is “against civilization and peace” and is an issue that needs to be taken up with the UN Human Rights Commission, when just 30 miles north of Seoul is a real human rights issue, North Korea that the majority of Koreans like to ignore and cover for as a “special situation”.  Maybe Yasukuni is a “special situation” to the Japanese as well?

HT: Japan Probe

A Japanese court has forced the Japanese government to pay individual compensation claims to Japanese war orphans from World War II:

A court Friday ordered the government to pay millions of dollars in compensation to dozens of Japanese who, as children, were stranded in China at the close of World War II.

The 65 plaintiffs claimed the government was responsible for their delayed return to Japan and upon their return, had failed to provide adequate support to help them reintegrate into Japanese society. They were each seeking $285,000 in compensation.

The plaintiffs were the children of Japanese military officials, bureaucrats and private businessmen who were sent to settle in China’s remote northeast. They were left behind by their fleeing parents as Soviet troops closed in at the end of the war in 1945.

About 6,300 people came back after ties between the two states was normalized in 1972, including 2,500 who were under age 12 when they were abandoned in China, according to Health Ministry official Hayato Igarashi.

Raised by Chinese who adopted them, most of them were too young to remember their Japanese names or those of their natural parents. Only some have been able to reconnect with their families.

This ruling makes me wonder if a Japanese court could make the Japanese government at least apologize for their “comfort women” policies of World War II? It just seems like a way to settle at least one thorny issue between Japan and it’s neighbors.

For anyone that thinks that the US government’s tilt towards Japan is driven solely by Washington’s desire to contain China, here is a link that shows that Tokyo & Washington’s relationship is much deeper than geo-politics in northeast Asia:

Japan has pledged US $29 million to the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) efforts to boost rural development and the disarmament of thousands of illegal armed groups in war-ravaged Afghanistan.

UNDP’s office in the Afghan capital, Kabul, said $23 million of the contribution announced on Thursday would be used to support rural development projects in the provinces of Bamiyan, Balkh, Nangarhar and Kandahar in conjunction with the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development(MRRD). The remaining $6 million would be used to support the Disbandment of Illegal Armed Groups (DIAG) programme.

Anita Nirody, UNDP’s country director for Afghanistan, said an estimated 2,000 illegal armed groups were involved in activities designed to destabilise the government and hurt the international community¿s ability to deliver much needed practical support to residents.

Nirody said the Japanese government’s very generous contribution was essential to the DIAG process. (…)

The $29 million was part of the $60 million pledged by Japan during a Tokyo conference on Afghanistan in July. Representatives from 53 countries and 15 international organisations attended the event. Japan has been one of post-conflict Afghanistan’s major sponsors.

Major John has more here on Japan’s contributions in Afghanistan.

The US is looking for allies in the future that deliver more than words or 3,000 soldiers cooped up on a base making toilet seats and Japan is showing a willingness to step up and fill that void. Japan due to constitutional constraints cannot do much militarily in support of the US (though this could change in the near future), but they are using their money and political power to aid the US from everything from Afghanistan, deploying troops to Iraq, and taking a leading role in containing North Korea.

This close relationship also has allowed Japan to successfully broker a deal with Washington over the sensitive issue of the US Marine presence on Okinawa. Notice how this issue was handled compared to the war time control and camp consolidation issue on the Korean peninsula. Activist groups on Okinawa protested the US Marine presence, but didn’t do a Braveheart style assault on a US military installation or attack individual US Marines like in Korea. The Japanese government didn’t encourage and finance anti-US hate groups or political leaders publicly make statements encouraging anti-Americanism, like in Korea. I could go on and on but I think everyone gets the point. All the theatrics by the Korean government and their anti-US hate groups destroyed any relationship of mutual trust that existed between the ROK and US sides, while in Japan the government built a relationship of mutual trust and negotiated competently and received a security deal favorable to their long term interests. What has all the theatrics from the Korean side gained them? An overly belligerent North Korea, a revitalized Japan, a sagging economy, and Yankee with one foot out the door leaving Korea with a huge security vacuum their not going to be able to fill by 2009 even with a massive tax increase.

The world changed and Japan reevaluated their interests to change with it and be a country that matters, the world changed and Korea thought it was still 1985.

Here is the understatement of the month; that Japanese and South Koreans don’t trust each other:

A record-high 59 percent of Japanese believe ties with South Korea have been strained in the past year, and more than half of Japanese regard the country as untrustworthy, according to a joint survey by The Yomiuri Shimbun and major South Korean daily Hankook Ilbo.

Regarding the current state of bilateral relations, 36 percent of Japanese respondents gave positive responses, a plunge of 24 percentage points from a similar survey conducted last year. However, the proportion of Japanese gloomy about ties with Seoul leaped 24 percentage points to 59 percent, the highest figure in five surveys conducted since 1995.

Here is what the survey determined of what South Koreans think of the Japanese:

According to the survey, many South Koreans were critical of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni Shrine and most were pessimistic that the countries could resolve their dispute over the Takeshima islets (called Dokdo in South Korea). The Yasukuni and Takeshima issues appear to have cast a shadow over public sentiment in the two countries and tainted perceptions of the other, according to the survey.

In late June and early July, 3,000 eligible Japanese and 1,000 eligible South Korean voters were surveyed by the newspapers. Of the Japanese, 1,867, or 62.2 percent, gave valid responses.

In South Korea, only 12 percent of respondents thought bilateral ties were good while 87 percent said the relationship was strained. The figures were almost unchanged from the previous survey.

My only questions with these results are, who the hell are the 12% who think things are going well for the Korea-Japan relationship? I haven’t met a Korean yet that thinks relations are good between Japan and Korea, but according to this survey they are out there.

Read the rest of the article for more survey results that pretty much confirm everything you already suspected about various issues between Japan and Korea.

This was so predictable:

South Korea has called for a calm response to North Korea’s missile tests, accusing Japan of heightening tensions through its hawkish remarks.

“There is no reason to fuss over this from the break of dawn like Japan, but every reason to do the opposite,” said a statement from the office of President Roh Moo-hyun’s spokesman.

“There is nothing good in heightening tensions on the Korean peninsula and worsening inter-Korean relations. This will not help at all to settle the nuclear issue or the missile issue,” it said Sunday.

“It is the president’s view not to raise a shrill voice but to respond calmly,” it said.

“The possible launch of a Daepodong missile had been widely publicized in advance. It was aimed at nobody and did not lead to a state of emergency in either our country or other countries.”

Roh’s government has expressed caution at a US and Japanese push to slap further sanctions on North Korea at the United Nations Security Council.

President Roh has been feeling the heat due to his lackluster response to the North Korean missile tests, so he pulled out the first play in the Roh Playbook, which is blame the Japanese. Why not? It usually works despite the idiocy of the comments.

How can he say the missiles were aimed at no one? They were obviously aimed at provoking Japan by landing close to their shores with no fore-warning in advance not to mention almost hitting an Asiana Airliner. Then if the Taepo-dong2 had actually worked who knows where it would have landed. If it would have landed any where near the US shores you would have seen a real increase in tensions.

I’m all for a cool and calculated response to the North Korean threat, but could someone please tell President Roh to shut the hell up.