Column: A Little Fantasy, A Little Reality, A Lot of Absurdity (Letters from Japan, Part 8)

This spring Mr. Thompson is a visiting professor at Osaka University of Commerce. This is the eighth of his"Letters from Japan."

Fantasy

November 10, 2005. The advisors to President Kerry are in a quandary. They are divided on the issue. Two of the Judges were Kerry’s appointees, the other an appointee of President Clinton. Yet he has rallied support to his administration by an ongoing effort at making personal appeals to veterans groups. What a thing to have come down on the 230th anniversary of the United States Marine Corps. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has handed down a declaratory judgement stating that it would be unconstitutional for President Kerry to attend a prayer meeting at the White House and then go to a ceremony to lay a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery while engaging in a program with members of clergy from a variety of religious faiths.

The court has ruled that the presidential participation would represent an exercise "respecting the establishment" of religion as prohibited by the First Amendment, and moreover the actions of President Kerry would also be a very clear violation of the constitutional understanding that there is a "Wall of Separation" between all governmental actions in the United States and all religion.

Reality

On August 13, 2001, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited the Yasukuni Shinto Shrine to pray for peace and that Japan should never again go to war. He also paid respects in remembrance to the war dead. In April 2001 during his national campaign for election, the prime minister had pledged to veterans groups and to relatives of the war dead that he would make a visit to the shrine. The Shrine is dedicated to the war dead. The public elected him knowing well his position on the matter. On April 7, 2004, District Court of Fukuoka in southwestern Japan ruled that Koizuma's visit violated Article 20 of the Constitution of 1947 which "stipulates that the state and its organs must refrain from religious education or activity." (Japan Times, April 8, 2004; International Herald Tribune and Asahi Shimbun, English Edition, April 8, 2004, page one articles.)

The prime minister had made four visits to the shrine, but after the first visit 211 plaintiffs on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu filed a lawsuit seeking 21.1 million yen (about $200,000 U.S.) in damages from the government. They stated that they had suffered psychological damage resulting from the visit. The plaintiffs claimed that the visit was a constitutional violation because Koizumi paid homage to the shrine and he took part in a Shinto ceremony while there. Koizumi signed the guest book as "Prime Minister" Koizumi, and he used an official car for transportation to the shrine. The shrine had been a place of special reverence for Japan during the war as it did honor military dead of the country, and critics of the visit were especially grieved that the shrine includes among the military honored some dead (actually 14 named individuals) who were declared to be war criminals. The visits were noticed by Chinese and Koreans and considered offensive as they had been victims of the Japanese military. The Chinese government protested the visit.

In 1991, the Supreme Court of Japan had also ruled that Shinto shrine visits by the state leader were a violation of the constitution. Prime Minister Nakasone had visited the shrine in 1985.

The Fukuoka court did not award damages to the plaintiffs, but spokesmen for the plaintiffs said they were satisfied, that they had made their point. Because there were no damages awarded, the prime minister was precluded from appealing the ruling. Instead he simply said he would exercise his own faith as he personally wished to, and that his visits would continue. When asked if he made the visits as a private person or as prime minister, he replied that he is a private person, but he is also prime minister and that is simply reality.

An Absurdity

It is another country, why should we even consider the matter? Well, we wrote Article 20 of their Constitution, and based its content on a military decree of December 1945 which was aimed at denigrating and discrediting the Shinto religion, a faith that puts considerable emphasis upon honoring the dead.

But our constitution is "different." Is it? Many--ask them--citizens truly believe that our Constitution declares that there is separation of church and state, meaning all religion and all state activities. Of course, there are no such words in the document. But then, often it seems that judges have sought to read the words into the Constitution. Actually the words "a wall of separation" should exist between "church and state" were proclaimed by President Thomas Jefferson in a private letter--somehow leaked to the press, or was it a "letter to the editor" of the New York Times? Jefferson's words were not in the Declaration of Independence, which he penned. They were not written into the Constitution by Jefferson--he was not a delegate at the Philadelphia convention in 1787, and they were not written into the Bill of Rights by Jefferson, Madison wrote those (Jefferson did not even vote on the Bill of Rights--he was secretary of state at the time.) They were his private words. Yet many citizens and I dare say many judges would be quite content to consider Jefferson's words as constitutional ones on the issue. Say, for instance, many judges of the 9th Circuit, ergo the fantasy scenario of this essay.

The political protests that surround the prime minister of Japan and his shrine visits involve more than religion. They involve the notion that a religion cannot honor dead who were in their lives sinners. So on the presidential visits to Arlington, amidst all the prayers and remembrances, we should feel good that all buried there had never sinned during their life times, and especially that they had never done anything bad during their war service.

I would like to think that. However, in response to one of my recent essays lamenting (or at least regretting) the use of the atomic bombs in World War II, a critic began the litany of Japanese evils as an answering argument to my laments. Fair enough, "their atrocities were worse than our atrocities," is always a debating point that may have a scintilla of credence for some debate judges. It was pointed out that the Japanese had even resorted to the use of biological weapons in China. That "fact"--and I have no reason to doubt that it is a "fact," seems to have been revealed in some U.S. government documents brought to light in the 1970s which point to the Japanese activities in 1941 and 1942. Moving from proven facts to speculative facts, there are some very disturbing suggestions regarding that biological warfare contained in Stewart Lone and Gavan McCormack's Korea Since 1850 (St Martin's Press, 1993). The United States may have known about the biological weapons attacks on China immediately after the war. But our government kept the information secret. Motive? Speculation only. We wanted control of the information for our own developmental activities involving biological weapons. And here is the most disturbing speculation. We may have used the weapons in the Korean conflict. I leave the reader to check out Lone and McCormack's work, and also the "Korean International War Crimes Trial," June 23, 2001," www.iacenter.org.

War atrocities are a human issue and guilt does not stop at the water's edge. The only trouble is that the victors conduct the war trials, and the defendants are (almost) always from the losing side. I suppose I just offer this point as a counter rebuttal in my debate over the bomb. But I can put the point into my scenario as well. Fantasy--the Kerry administration has established detente with North Korea, and relations with the country are just peachy. Along comes November 10. A group of new immigrants from North Korea protest. They find it offensive that our president would honor fallen military some of whom who had--in their way of thinking--been involved in starting an epidemic of haemorphagic fever in their village leading to the deaths of many of their family members. (p. 124, Korea Since 1950). What's President Kerry to do?