Koizumi’s stunning victory reminds us all that Japan remains a global power

It’s been 25 years, a quarter of a century, since books were published touting "Japan as Number One." Those were the days when the Rising Sun redux cast its expanding rays all over the planet, when factory after factory was being opened in the United States and Europe to toasts poured from pounded-open casks of saké, and the Japanese – their pockets bulging with dollars and pounds – bought Pebble Beach and the Rockefeller Center.

It was feared by the US and Europe that the onslaught of the Men with Yen would overwhelm the economies of both continents.

In the 1980s, only two decades after Allied Occupation of a defeated Nippon ended in 1952, Japan was producing 10.7 million automobiles a year versus Detroit’s smaller output of 6.9 million cars. The Japanese watch industry ("Seiko," "Citizens," etc.) had put the famed Swiss watch industry in the shade; the British motorcycle industry had been virtually wiped out; the German camera giants had collapsed in the face of Japanese competition. As for Japanese radios, tape recorders, hi-fi stuff, computers, and so on – all the gadgetry you could snap up in Akihabara – you know the answer. The culmination of this was SONY’s invention of the "Walkman." The Shinkansen bullet trains that zipped from Tokyo to Osaka and onwards in the Kansai plain were, and remain, at dizzying speeds of 300 kilometers per hour, the finest and fastest in the world – save France’s TGV today, and Shanghai’s German-installed MagLev train.

But the tide receded and Japan lost its momentum and image of dynamism and aggressiveness, lapsing back into the greying climate of an overcrowded archipelago saddled with an aging population of 127.3 million and zero population growth.

Rising China has become, instead, the Flavor of the New Century. Its breakneck growth seems unstoppable at more than 9 percent a year, its export juggernaut picking up momentum in August despite its very small currency revaluation on July 21 (as the Asian Wall Street Journal put it, not even a speed bump to put it down). In short, exports in August topped $67.82 billion, up from July’s $65.6 billion and 32 percent higher than exports in August last year.

China’s military build-up, too, is impressive – and threatening.

Its Japan-bashing has accelerated, with wartime atrocities almost mandatory reading in schools and the anti-Japanese patriotic war by the Communist People’s Army rhymed in song, opera and legend.

Whenever Japan’s Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and other leaders visit the Yasukuni Shrine honoring Japan’s war dead (including its executed military war criminals), the Chinese – and the Koreans – go into hysterics. Sanamagan. Other countries, even Germany, honor their war dead without resentment or challenge from their erstwhile enemies or victims. Not so Japan: the Chinese and the Koreans (strangely, not the Filipinos who suffered one million dead out of a population of only 18 million, and a massacre of 100,000 in the Rape of Manila) never seem to forgive or forget.

In any event, with China looming so large on the Asian scene, and an ambitious, also one-billion population strong India, trailing only a bit behind on the horizon, Japan seemed shrunken and headed towards senility.

Junichiro Koizumi’s stunning victory at the polls the other day has changed all that.

Koizumi wasn’t leading a new party, but one – the Liberal Democratic Party – which had almost grown moribund after dominating Japan’s politics for the postwar half-century.

Yet, Mr. K demonstrated that untiring, courageous and imaginative leadership could transform an old, tired party into something new – and Japan’s hidebound political landscape could be rejuvenated by discarding the chronic consensus, habatsu-style of hesitant decision-making into a Personalist-type of leadership.

In the old days, it could be said that Japan would never produce a Napoleon, or a Lee Kuan Yew, or a Sukarno – for even her so-called "leaders" were only cogs in the powerful machine once-called "Japan Incorporated." Over the years, Japan easily exchanged one Prime Minister for another without a break in stride, for each one was cast in the same mold. None of them were expected to demonstrate "individualism"– indeed, the Japanese painstakingly struggled to avoid standing out in a crowd. The Japanese way was to think and move, not as individuals, but within the context of their group as a team. The method for obtaining consensus in the group was called matomari or "adjustment."

Koizumi, with his flamboyant hairdo and theatrical ways, revised all that. He stuck out in the crowd, he stuck the dirty finger in the face of the old fuddy-duddies. He called for dramatic "reform." He proposed to do the unthinkable, privatize Japan's Post Office which has 24,000 branches, employs 280,000 fulltime employees (one in three public servants, or, as journalist David Pilling described it, a force bigger "than the army, navy and air force combined.") The postal system is significant since it has savings and insurance assets of about Yen 350,000 billion ($3,190 billion) making it the largest financial institution on earth, two and a half times bigger than Citigroup. The fact that 85 percent of Japanese households – thanks to the frugal nature of the Japanese – have savings with the Post Office (and over 60 percent of the population hold one of the postal assurance policies) made it a "hot potato" political issue.

Koizumi, assailed on his resolve, nailed his flag to the mast on that issue. On August 8, losing a key vote on postal privatization in Parliament, the Prime Minister dissolved the Lower House of the Diet, expelled the 33 "refuseniks" who voted against his initiative from the LDP and called for elections.

He campaigned non-stop, US-style. His victory was beyond all expectations. The LDP, by itself, captured 296 seats, a 50-seat gain that enables it to control the 480-seat Lower House without need for a coalition partner. Its partner is the Buddhist party, Komeito – the offshoot of the old Sokka Gakai – which also scored. The governing coalition can now muster 327 seats, or seven more than the two-thirds majority it requires to override any opposition from the Upper House of the Parliament. The opposition Democratic Party went down in disastrous defeat, plummeting down to 113 seats from a former 177. Its leader, Katsuya Okada, promptly resigned, instead of crying out, as Filipino sore-loser politicians do, "We wuz robbed!"

The Asian Wall Street Journal in its lead editorial, Koizumi’s Moment, declared that the unexpectedly large margin of victory means that Japan’s voters have endorsed Mr. Koizumi’s policy mix of smaller government and an activist foreign policy. No more diplomatic timidity for Japan: that was Koizumi’s thrust. He is now the new Shogun – the most powerful Japanese Prime Minister in 30 years.

What will he do with this power?

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For one thing, he will strive to revise Japan’s postwar "pacifist Constitution" imposed by Gen. Douglas MacArthur on the vanquished Japan – a document drawn up by him and his technocrats and generals in six days in 1946.

This organic law in Article 9 declared that "the Japanese people, forever, renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation, or threat or use of force . . ."

The same clause promises that "land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained."

This is why the Japanese still have to sheepishly disguise their armed forces as "Self-Defense Forces" although they carry more lethal clout than most nations on this planet.

Energized by his new mandate, Koizumi’s "cha-cha" efforts may be more significant and successful than our cosmetic one. Koizumi has long said that he wants Japan to be a "normal" power. The nation that once launched total war in the Pacific, and attacked Pearl Harbor, and rampaged in China, was compelled by the shackles of its Constitution to send 800 soldiers to Iraq, but strictly define their duties as non-combatant. Perhaps – not any more? In any event, Japan is trying to get a permanent member-seat in the United Nations Security Council – a move strongly opposed by some Asian neighbors, prominently China. Japan and China are at loggerheads quite plainly.

Mr. K has been advocating taking a stronger position with regard to China. Now we’ll see what he means. He now has the backing of his electorate when he stands up to Beijing.

Robyn Lim, a professor of International Relations at Nanzan University in Nagoya, and author of "The Geopolitics of East Asia" wrote yesterday that Koizumi "can also thank Beijing for contributing to his victory. Two days before the election, a Japanese Navy P-3C patrol aircraft spotted five Chinese warships near the Chunxiao gas field in the East China Sea. That was the first time Chinese warships appeared in these contested waters. The flotilla was led by one of the Sovremenny cruisers China has bought from Russia. The Sovremmenys is equipped with the SS-N-22 ‘Sunburn’ supersonic sea-skimming anti-ship cruise missile that worries even the US Navy."

The warships intruded into a disputed area between China and Japan, where a Japanese firm has been drilling into a gas field on Japan’s side of the line. Koizumi had anticipated that, emboldened by recent joint war games with Russia, might threaten Japan with "gunboat diplomacy", and his warnings seem to have been vindicated.

Seeing China’s military build-up, and the possibility of a clash over the defense of Taiwan, Japan may now accelerate more openly its resolve to rearm. This ability is formidable. Japan once had the largest and most useless battleships of World War II – the Yamato, sunk off Okinawa by 300 US warplanes; and its sister ship the Musashi, sent to the bottom in the Sibuyan channel by US attack, not far from where the MV Dona Paz sank in peacetime, taking 3,000 passengers to a watery grave. Its formidable factories can retool in a flash for military manufacture. Its inventors have already proven their mettle. "Toyota," despite anti-Japanese sentiment, is the best-selling car or vehicle in China.

In Asia, and in the world, Japan – with its economy still Number Two – can never be underestimated. Now, Tokyo and its policies loom even larger on the terrain, after Koizumi’s fantastic poll victory. China’s march to progress and might is grand – its great population of 1.3 billion is being harnessed. China’s extraordinary ability to mobilize workers and capital has tripled per capita income in a generation and has raised 300 million out of poverty. In Shangai-Pudon, the Chinese have built 12 Makatis in just six years.

Yet, China cannot become a superpower without first catching up with Japan. Most people, with the hype on China fast becoming a tsunami of propaganda, don’t realize that Japan is still far ahead. China combined with India account for a mere 6 percent of global product – half that of Japan’s. And the Japanese, stirred out of complacency and slumber by Koizumi, have received a bugle call to return to their battle stations.

Yamatodamashii, I suspect, is far from dead. This means "Japanese spirit" – and the spirit is willing, though the flesh is weak. Mr. Koizumi has expressed the resolve to convert that weakness into muscle once more.