[antimedia] FW: A Sense of Asia # 296 The Koizumi Revolution [Cont.]: Japan still Asia's model?

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From: Sol W. Sanders [mailto:solsanders at cox.net] 
Sent: Friday, December 22, 2006 11:32 AM
To: sws
Subject: A Sense of Asia # 296 The Koizumi Revolution [Cont.]: Japan still
Asia's model?



 World Tribune.com
<file:///C:/DOCUME~1/ADMINI~1/LOCALS~1/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_image002.jpg> 


A SENSE OF ASIA 

Japan still Asia’s model as the Koizumi Revolution continues 


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 <http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2006/s.html> See the Sol
Sanders Archive

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By Sol Sanders

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

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 Sol W. Sanders
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Friday, December 22, 2006 

You would not know it from reading The New York Times [The Asahi Shimbun of
the United States] but the revolution led by former Japanese Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi is alive, well — and progressing. 


Despite a campaign of denigration and misinformation by left-leaning,
largely mediocre, so-called mainstream media in Japan and the U.S., it may
be Asia’s most important contemporary phenomenon. Remember: Japan was the
only non-European society in the 19th and 20th century successfully to
modernize — if ending in the tragedy of the Great Pacific War. 

The vapor trail of the soaring China Boom rocket of the past two decades,
fraught with its essentially rickety launchpad, obscures events. But as the
Chinese, themselves, increasingly try to find answers to entering the world
power constellation; many Asians look to Japan as the model. Generations of
Chinese did so until intoxication with Sovietism led to three decades of
bloody repression and stagnation. The Chinese Communists unfruitfully have
devoted considerable resources to asking why that model failed. 

And, indeed, without great publicity, Chinese intellectuals have returned to
puzzle through how the Japanese made it and they, with their vaunted mother
culture, did not. The Chinese have turned off their failed campaign of
intimidation directed at Koizumi, and now even a joint government-sponsored
binational commission will examine interpretations of modern history between
the two countries with a view to reexamining textbooks. Beijing has even
consented, at least initially, to include the Communist massacre at Tien
Mien An in 1989 along with reviewing, again, the Rape of Nanking in 1937! 

It’s all the more fascinating for, like Japan, present Chinese economic
success is the same kind of bubble which exploded into a decade of Japanese
stagnation and self-examination. That the Japanese now appear not only
climbing slowly out of their catatonia is not only important to its economic
partners — particularly the U.S. — but also to economic and political
development strategies in East and South Asia. 

This reorganization of Japanese society, not just economic restructuring, is
as unpredictable as fundamental developments in our fast moving world always
are. Not all signs are optimistic. The demographic catastrophe with falling
fertility, birth rates, and population is a basic concern, not only in
economic terms but because of social and political fallout. Japan, unlike
the U.S., has no tradition, nor is it likely to develop, of a solution to
its aging population based on in-migration. Japan’s Korean ethnic minority,
so close and yet so far from assimilation, is evidence no change there is
likely. 

But overall the scene is pregnant. When Koizumi chose to leave office —
itself an anomaly in politics the world over with Tony Blair hanging on for
dear life, Jacques Chirac maneuvering to at least name his successor, and
even George Bush fighting off attempts to write the history of his
administration two years before it ends — the question was whether he was,
to use that old American cliché, a flash in the pan. It was no secret his
sometimes bizarre [certainly by Japanese standards] behavior — the hairdo,
the guitar playing, the divorce, the skateboarding, the offhand [and as
often offcolor] quips — masked what fashionable Japanese interi [the
chattering classes] considered his conservative, even [by their standards]
reactionary, concepts and strategies. 

Could his successor — after all a scion of an ultra-conservative political
family dynasty whose origins were as clerks to the discredited military —
with anything but his flair carry on? 

It’s much too early to make the call about Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Media
pollsters — with more than the usual axe to grind to bolster nattering of
their own and colleagues in New York, Washington, and Paris — say he is
losing out. 

But after his first parliamentary session, the evidence is to the contrary. 

Abe has led the Liberal-Democratic Party [and its recalcitrant coalition
ally, the neo-Buddhist New Komeito Party] in a series of successful
legislative victories. These are largely aimed at Koizumi’s goals:
liberalizing the Japanese economy and meeting growing military challenges
from an obstreperous North Korea, and a potentially runaway Chinese
military. 

The biggest hurdles are still ahead. 

It would take a two-thirds majority in both Diet houses for the referendum
Abe favors to bring the reality of Japan’s military prowess and challenges
into line with the MacArthur Constitution which set the unattainable goal of
otherworld pacifism. The decoupling of Japanese savings from a century and a
half system of industrial policy — expanding capital plant on the backs of
the consumer — goes ahead, even if Kozimui had to accept a longer time
frame. For example, the dismantling of Tokyo’s virtual monopoly hold on the
tax base has started, transferring responsibility to cities and prefectures
for budgeting and sharing taxing authority. It will help clean up the
cesspool of Japanese political corruption. 

These are not just economic readjustments. They are democratizing the
Japanese system, meeting the 21st century headon, but also going back, if
you will, to some of the early Meiji Era savants who hoped — and failed — to
import Ralph Waldo Emerson’s individual responsibility [as my friend Yoshio
Terasawa has pointed out] along with industrialization. 

There is no guarantee these measures would solve all Japan’s social and
political issues, any more than they do in the U.S. with all the anomalies
of American society.. But given Japan’s role in the modern world, its
continuing position as Washington’s most important ally in a volatile part
of the world of growing importance, they may provide a new model for other
Asians striving to deal with modernization, and its concomitant,
globalization. 

Sol W. Sanders, ( <mailto:solsanders at cox.net> solsanders at cox.net), is an
Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former
correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press
International. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com and
<http://www.east-asia-intel.com/> East-Asia-Intel.com.

Friday, December 22, 2006 

 


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