Gavan McCormack: The Okinawan Election and Resistance to Japan's Military First Politics
[Gavan McCormack is a Japan Focus coordinator. His new book, Client State: Japan in the American Embrace, will be published by Verso in May 2007. For earlier essays by him on Okinawa, see the Japan Focus files.]
The election for Governor of Okinawa on 19 November is unique among prefectural elections in Japan in its national, regional and even global implications. The Japanese state has been struggling for more than a decade to secure the compliance of Okinawan people with an agenda whose core is priority to the US alliance over the constitution and priority to military (songun) over civil or democratic principle, something that it abhors when practiced by North Korea.
Struggling to resist, the Okinawan people tire and grow old, while the state continually rejuvenates, as most recently under the Abe Shinzo government. If their resistance is defeated now, the nation-wide processes of constitutional revision and military reorganization will gain momentum. If they are victorious, the deals done under Bush and Koizumi will have to be renegotiated.
Throughout the postwar era, Okinawa has been the quintessential child of the US-Japan relationship. In it, the nature of both is best revealed. As the rest of Japan faces the implications of US pressure to become a fully-fledged ally, the “Great Britain of the Far East,” and as forces associated with the Liberal Democratic Party relish and seek to advance this prospect, Okinawa presents a frame within which possible national futures are contested: in the one, Japan’s “war state” and “peace state,” sundered since 1945, would be rejoined with Okinawa leading the country along the path of militarized dependence on the United States, alienation from Asia, priority of military over civil affairs, and retreat from constitutional democracy; in the other, Japan’s civil society and its committed democrats would assert constitutional sovereignty and regain the initiative in determining state policy from the United States and its servants in Tokyo, with important consequences for Japan’s role within an emerging Asian community. The November 19 election will not determine the outcome of this process, but it will certainly modify its outcome. It will also constitute a major test of whether the Rumsfeld doctrine of military reorganization will survive the firing of its leader. ...
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The election for Governor of Okinawa on 19 November is unique among prefectural elections in Japan in its national, regional and even global implications. The Japanese state has been struggling for more than a decade to secure the compliance of Okinawan people with an agenda whose core is priority to the US alliance over the constitution and priority to military (songun) over civil or democratic principle, something that it abhors when practiced by North Korea.
Struggling to resist, the Okinawan people tire and grow old, while the state continually rejuvenates, as most recently under the Abe Shinzo government. If their resistance is defeated now, the nation-wide processes of constitutional revision and military reorganization will gain momentum. If they are victorious, the deals done under Bush and Koizumi will have to be renegotiated.
Throughout the postwar era, Okinawa has been the quintessential child of the US-Japan relationship. In it, the nature of both is best revealed. As the rest of Japan faces the implications of US pressure to become a fully-fledged ally, the “Great Britain of the Far East,” and as forces associated with the Liberal Democratic Party relish and seek to advance this prospect, Okinawa presents a frame within which possible national futures are contested: in the one, Japan’s “war state” and “peace state,” sundered since 1945, would be rejoined with Okinawa leading the country along the path of militarized dependence on the United States, alienation from Asia, priority of military over civil affairs, and retreat from constitutional democracy; in the other, Japan’s civil society and its committed democrats would assert constitutional sovereignty and regain the initiative in determining state policy from the United States and its servants in Tokyo, with important consequences for Japan’s role within an emerging Asian community. The November 19 election will not determine the outcome of this process, but it will certainly modify its outcome. It will also constitute a major test of whether the Rumsfeld doctrine of military reorganization will survive the firing of its leader. ...