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Copyright 2014 Michael Penn
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Library of International Relations 73
ISBN: 978 1 78076 369 9
eISBN: 978 0 85773 615 4
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
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CHAPTER 1
SEPTEMBER 11 THROUGH THE
ALLIANCE PRISM
As they pondered their response to the horrific terrorist attacks in the United States in late September 2001, two intellectuals offered starkly different advice to the Japanese nation. Toshiyuki Shikata, a professor at Teikyo University and a former general, advised, A nation should think of what it should do, rather than what it can do. Shikata and Nakamura were talking past each other; the very starting point of their discussion put them at odds. For Professor Shikata, the key issue was that Japan must give up its constitutional ban on the exercise of the right of collective self-defence. He believed that the time had come to put away the silly self-imposed legal restrictions that were obstructing legitimate efforts to ensure Japans national security. Dr Nakamura, on the other hand, was focused on how Japanese military activities would affect and would be perceived by the Afghan people, whom he had served as an aid worker for 17 years. He worried that the Japanese people had no knowledge or understanding of the actual conditions and beliefs of people in the Islamic world, and that hasty support for US military action could contribute to humanitarian disasters.
The views expressed by these two men encapsulate much of the dilemma that Japan faced in the immediate wake of the September 11 attacks. Shikata was expressing the dominant outlook of Japans ruling conservatives, who viewed the issue through the prism of the USJapan security alliance and felt a keen need to strengthen the Japanese military. Dr Nakamura in spite of his specialist knowledge was giving voice to the underlying sentiment of many ordinary Japanese people, who believed that violence would simply beget more violence. This was the crux of the dilemma for Japanese policies toward the War on Terror from its very outset: the Japanese government and the majority of the Japanese people perceived two different political imperatives that led in two entirely different directions. In other words, there was no consensus about Japans proper role in the world of the early twenty-first century.
The core issue examined in the pages that follow is precisely this struggle for the identity of Japan a struggle with profound implications for the global role of one of the worlds leading economic powers. Broadly speaking, it began as a three-cornered struggle between, on the one side, the Japanese elite and the American foreign-policy establishment; and, on the other side, the mass of ordinary Japanese citizens and their spokespeople. This book is the story of how that struggle worked itself out from September 11, 2001, to the death of Osama Bin Laden.
The Japanese Experience of September 11
The horror of the September 11 attacks was a uniquely American occurrence, even while (owing to television) it was a global event. Hundreds of millions of people watched, and watched again, the images of the twin towers collapsing in flames. Most people retain a very clear recollection of where they were and what they were doing when they first saw or heard about the attacks. Certainly those who were present in New York or the Washington DC area, and those who lost or came close to losing loved ones will remember that day more intensely than others; nevertheless, every nation in the world and many millions of people had their own experience of the al-Qaeda attacks. The destruction of the World Trade Center will remain an iconic historical event for many years to come.
Despite the enormous geographical distance between the Japanese archipelago and the Atlantic coast of the United States, Japan also experienced the attacks with a sense of immediacy. The pictures were right there in everyones living room, and instantly the issue of terrorism rose to the top of the public agenda. In schoolyards, in offices and on street corners alike, Japanese people exchanged their perceptions with friends and neighbours: Who had done it? Why had it happened? What happens now?
The debate provoked by the al-Qaeda attacks briefly drew in a much wider range of public commentators, and much more public interest, than was normally the case for political affairs in Japan. Scholars and journalists and other commentators initially raised a variety of aspects, seeing different levels of significance in what had occurred: Was it a crime or a war? How would the United States retaliate? How should Japan position itself in relation to the American response?
After the initial shock had passed, the Japanese government, along with its conservative allies in the media and elsewhere, worked to reshape the publics view and changing memories of the September 11 terrorist attacks. The government began to forge an official narrative that suited its emerging policy goals. This ideological campaign argued that Osama bin Laden was a serious threat, not only to the United States and its people, but specifically to Japan as well. In this way the groundwork was laid for the view that Japan must stand at the side of the Bush administration and the American people in their time of troubles. Moreover, many Japanese policymakers saw a tightening alignment with US policy, not only as Japans duty to their ally, but also as a rare opportunity to promote their own visions of Japanese national interests, which were often at odds with the preferences of the majority of the Japanese people.
When American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, it was just before 8:47 a.m. on the Atlantic coast. In Japan the corresponding time was 9:47 p.m. Since it took a while to understand the enormity of what was occurring, and because the attack on the South Tower came after 10 p.m. Japan time, most Japanese learned about the terrorist attacks only on the morning of September 12, many hours after most Americans had already spent the day watching the images on their televisions, contacting their friends and relatives, and contemplating what they had seen.
