Hi Michi ( Yoshimichi Moriyama )

Glad to meet you. I'm Peter Coates :)

I was not aware Japan gave any money to China or South Korea. All the Western media and many scholarly sources come up with is the negatives: the comfort woman issue; the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_surrounding_Yasukuni_Shrine etc.

I increasingly recognise that many of the ongoing bad news stories about Japan in WWII are due to current Japan-China friction.

I know more about Germany. I'm aware that Germany has provided TKMS-HDW Dolphin submarines $Billions in total below price to Israel in apology for the Holocaust http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin-class_submarine#Additional_procurement .

While we are chatting. Do you have any views on how influential the Nippon Kaigi are in Japanese politics - particularly on defence issues?

Regards

Pete

Plantagenet,
The Nippon Kaigi is made up of generally conservative people but with economicaly, politically, and socially diverse interests. It has
some influence. But if it has something in common, it is the culturally conservative mood.

The Kaigi is like the Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP) because of its diverse interests groups. LDP has been in power in post-war Japan almost without a break. It has had strong ties with big business and conservative groups. This aspect is very visible and still made more so by mass media.
What is not observed is that it has been trully a Japanese grass-roots party, almost always with more than a half representation in the parliament and for a considerably long time with close to two thirds of the seats, because it has had links and ties not only with big business but with farmers, peasants, small business, shop-keepers; it has also catered to the interests of unorganized workers. It has been a catch-all party or the only grass-root party in this sense, which has made it stay in power.
The Kaigi has its own limits. I think the increase of its moody influence owes much to the anti-Japanese policy of China and South Korea.
Japanese politics has been deeply divided between conservatives and non-conservatives, and deeply divided among conservatives. If Abe trys to go beyond certain bounds, the division in his own party or among the conservatives will become appararent. For instance, countries like the Philippines, Malay, Vietnam seem to have wanted a stronger Japanese commitment, but Abe seems not to have been able to do that on account of his intra-party support and of Japanese public opinion.

The British forces can go to distant, overseas lands to engage in battle; the Japanese self-defense foreces are not so composed as to be able to act like that; they are so constructed as to best fight in Japanese propinquities by fulfilling subsidiary and supplementary roles to assist the US Forces. To be continued.

Plantagenet,
Continued from above.
The Japanese Self-Defense soldier sort of has a rifle with no telescope attached to it to take aim; the US commander in Okinawa has it. I think that Australian generals and military planners know this.

I hope that this area of the world will someday and in no distant time in the future free itself from an armament race and live cooperatively and friendly, free from an apprehensive cloud.

Best regards,
Michi Moriyama.

Hi Michi

Thank you very much for your reply. I've been thinking about the Australian equivalent of Nippon Kaigi.

I think the Liberal-National Coalition with all of its members of Parliament, branches and business connections in the city and monied rural areas is most equivalent. Another Australian synonym is the Big End of Town adding in farmers and small business. Australia would stoutly deny that we have "peasants" as that is something we claimed to have left behind in the UK and Ireland in 1788.

I think some people in the US equate Nippon Kaigi with the Tea "Party" but the Tea Party is far more recent, more rightwing, unused to Governing and visibly over-represented by lightweight loopies like Sarah Palin.

I can see Japanese politicians would have problems engaging with smaller nations of Southeast Asia. Those nations may want some balance against Chinese influence but those nations may see Japan as an addition to already present US influence. The legacy of the War is of course complicated - with many southeast Asian nationalists created 1941-45.

My inexpert suggestion is that Japan needs product definition, at the public level separate from the US - which will take time. Australia meanwhile is stuck with the "whitemen" of Asia tag so we can't escape the quasi-US identity.

The US in its attempts (in some ways) to divest some of its defence costs and responsibilities onto the non-Communist powers (Japan, S Korea, Australia, India, Indonesia) in the region may be able to help with its soft power.

The paramilitary regional aid approach using landing helicopter dock ships and hospital ships during regional natural disasters may be one way for Japan and Australia to increasingly shine. The Japanese movie industry competing with the ever more successful Chinese movie industry is another way to spread strategic goodwill.

Just some suggestions.

Regards

Pete

PS. I'd like to discuss your points about Japan's re-emerging defence identity tomorrow. Cheers.

Plantagenet, thank you for your interest.

I do not think the Nippon Kaigi is a strongly united pressure group. I think it is a club, composed of many different political and economic interests, rather than a politically united group.

I suggest that you read, to know better than from me, for instance, www.thediplomat.com/Sheila Smith/Japan:Electoral Landslide With an Ambiguous Mandate.
Smith's interview with the diplomat.com, www.youtube/Abe's Post-Election Agenda for Japan, was also interesting to me.

I am not good at things like the Internet and its related terminology, but I also suggest thay you go to www.thediplomat.com/ and then click "interviews"; then you will find interview lists. You might find a litte bit of interest, Japan and its Neighbors: Shinzo Abe's North East Asia Diplomacy, China and the U.S.-Japan Alliance, and China and Japan's Deteriorating Relationship.

Youtube/Sino-Japanese Relations: Old Enmities and New Rivalries- Dr. Amy Catalinac and Dr. Amy King is not very good but not very bad to me.

Regards,
Mich

Hi Michi

The increasing disunity of Australia's Liberal-National Big End of Town Movement (I'll makeup an acronym :) are make it more like the disunited Nippon Kaigi.

I read The Diplomat frequently. Your advice prompted me to dig further.

I located an excellent essay by Ms Mina Pollmann, Feb 6, 2015 which enlarges on many of the points you and I have raised on Japan evolving a new defence policy posture. The article also raises the views of that increasingly quoted post MacArthur titan Admiral Robert Thomas, Commander of the Seventh Fleet.

"Admiralissimo" [I coined it here first :)] Thomas declares - Paragraph 5 http://thediplomat.com/2015/02/japan-wades-into-south-china-sea-issue/:

“I think allies, partners and friends in the region will look to the Japanese more and more as a stabilizing function.” Adm. Thomas went as far as to imply an offshore balancer role for Japan, meaning that Japan would help forestall conflict by helping the weaker disputants “balance” China. Adm. Thomas said, “In the South China Sea, frankly, the Chinese fishing fleet, the Chinese coast guard and the (navy) overmatch their neighbors. … I think that [Japanese Navy] operations in the South China Sea makes sense in the future.”

So there we have - marching orders for Abe and Defence Minister Nakatani ;-)

I am next writing an article on Japan's changing defence posture as it is influenced by Abe and Nakatani.
- One major issue is the implications of the following 2009 article http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aVoR7GOucg_k :

“May 26 [2009] (Bloomberg) -- Japan should consider developing the capability to conduct pre-emptive military strikes given North Korea’s nuclear test yesterday, a ruling party lawmaker said. “North Korea poses a serious and realistic threat to Japan,” former defense chief Gen Nakatani said today in Tokyo at a meeting of Liberal Democratic Party officials. “We must look at active missile defense such as attacking an enemy’s territory and bases.”

Is Nakatani still working towards such a capability?

Regards

Pete