ハーバードの季刊誌に寄稿
米ハーバード大学の季刊研究誌「季刊ハーバード・アジア」（Ｈａｒｖａｒｄ Ａｓｉａ Ｑｕａｒｔｅｒｌｙ）編集部から二〇〇一年秋号に原稿を頼まれた。特集「９・１１に関するアジアの見方」で、「日本と米国の戦争 自民党タカ派は絶好の機会と見ている」というタイトルで３ページにわたって掲載された。特集の寄稿者はＣＮＮ北京支局長、ハーバード大学教授（中国政府研究）、インドのハーバード大学大学院生（タイムズ・オブ・インディア紙に寄稿）、シンガポールのストレートタイムズ記者、アフガニスタン物理療法・リハビリ支援（ＰＡＲＳＡ）代表らが書いている。
私は一○月二五日に原稿（英文資料１）を送った。編集部から「日本が湾岸戦争でお金しか出さず、軍事的な貢献ができなかったことが日本人のトラウマになっているのは真っ赤なウソだ」という一文をもっと説明してほしいということだった。私はその理由を挿入した。文章が指定の字数をかなり上回っていたため、編集部が短くしたものが送られてきて、私も同意して掲載された。
雑誌が送られてきて、驚いたのは、私のエッセイの二ページ目にの三分の二ほどのスペースに、ワシントンの在米国日本国大使館のＫＡＺＵＹＵＫＩ ＫＡＴＡＹＡＭＡ氏が「日本大使館からの見方」というタイトルで、日本政府と自民党タカ派が繰り返している「日本は米国の同盟」「テロと最後まで戦う」などという見解を表明している。
日本外務省北米一課によると、「在米合衆国日本国大使館に片山和之氏という参事官（経済班）がいる」ことが分かった。
片山氏は、「クウエート政府は米ワシントン・ポスト紙に、独立と主権を取り戻すに当たって支援してくれた三○カ国の外国に感謝の意を表明する広告を掲載した。日本はこのメッセージの中で言及されなかった。その結果、日本は国際社会の中で、正当なメンバーとして扱われなかった。/このことは私を含む多くの日本人にとってトラウマになった」などと、外務省が９・１１以降展開してきた大うそを書いている。
編集部は筆者紹介のところで、わざわざ「日本大使館の公式見解ではない」とことわっているが、タイトルの通り「日本大使館」を見事に代弁している。
私の原稿をハーバード大は載せるだろうかと思っていた。片山氏の意見を載せてバランスをとったのだろうが、他の寄稿者にはそういう「配慮」はない。米国らしくない編集だと思う。
英文資料１
Original Essay to Harvard Asia Quarterly (October 25, 2001)JAPANESE SELF-DEFENSE FORCES AND THE SEPTEMBER 11 TERRORIST ATTACKS
Kenichi Asano
Doshisha University
Kyoto, JapanThe unforgettable September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States against the World Trade Center and Pentagon claimed the lives of thousands of Americans and many citizens of other countries.
I was with my university seminar students at a hotel room in Obihiro, Hokkaido, watching Japan’s NHK-TV news reports on the fire at the WTC, when that shocking scene of the second airplane crashing into the WTC south tower was broadcast live. My first thought was the danger of World War III breaking out, especially when I heard that President George W. Bush defined this attack as a “new war” against the United States.
I also knew that the Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, along with the ultra-rightist faction of the ruling Liberal-Democratic Party, would use this occasion to continue transforming Japan into "an ordinary state which has an armed forces and can manufacture and sell weapons." Koizumi at once officially stated that Japan would do everything possible to join "America's new war against terrorism." He emphasized that Japan would send its Self-Defence Forces to join America's war. And true to Koizumi’s promise, two Japanese Maritime SDF ships guarded a U.S. aircraft carrier that left Japan for the Indian Ocean. It was the first time ever for the Japanese SDF to join in an actual military operation.
I was tremendously saddened by the Sept. 11 incidents in the U.S. I was also shocked when the United States and the United Kingdom raided Afganistan without any declaration of war. Many civilians in Afganistan, including four United Nations-sponsored NGO workers, were killed in just the first weeklong series of attacks on Afghanistan.
On one hand, I can understand how outraged people are in the U.S. and how much they want to retaliate against the criminals who killed so many innocent people. Those attacks defined surely the most crucial period in the U.S. history. At the same time, I am obligated to note that the actions the U.S. government has been undertaking up to now are quite contrary to the universal definition of human rights and democracy -- which U.S. citizens and their government have been successfully spreading throughout the international community, including Japan.
A more plausible solution for justice would be for the U.S. government to at first indict those who specifically organized and ordered the attackers. The FBI has detained more than 400 suspects who are allegedly affiliated with the Sept. 11 incidents. I wonder why, indeed, U.S. law enforcement officials have not charged or indicted Mr. Osama bin Laden even though U.S. leaders have insistently repeated that he is the main criminal.
Bush's tactic of dividing the camps into "allies and enemies" or "the civilized and the barbarious" are -- like Hollywood films -- too simple a classification. It is difficult to define whether or not the Sept.11 attacks constitute a war against the United States. I think it was an unexpected, serious and terrible crime, which is a rare case in human history. The criminals should be investigated and tried in open and fair trials in the U.S., with Interpol invollved every step of the way.
An international conference for a "treaty to establish an international criminal court" was held in Rome In 1998. At that time, 120 countries favored such a treaty and it was adopted after five weeks of discussions. It is called the "Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court." Neither the U.S. nor Japan have yet ratified the treaty. An International Criminal Court can be most effective in punishing this kind of borderless crime.
By way of background, I spent one year in Springfield, Missouri as an exchange student in an American Field Service International Scholarship Exchange Student Program during 1966-67.
It was the Vietnam War period. In my class, all the students favored the war, except for me and a male classmate who had just returned to his hometown after staying in Nairobi, Kenya with his father, a Christian priest. Many classmates died in this war, a war in which many Americans thought was justified in fighting Communism. We all had a 20-year reunion in 1986, and none of my classmates supported the idea of the Vietnam war as having been fought for justice. The Vietnamese people are still suffering today from the biochemical weapons the U.S. army used during the war. I hear that quite a few American ex-soldiers are also mentally struggling as PTSD patients.
I learned the values of democracy and due process of law during my stay in the U.S., and I treasure it. Authoritarian leaders, such as former President Suharto of Indonesia, have always said that the idea of democracy and human rights was born in Western society and thus differs from country to country. I think the idea of democracy and human rights are universal. It is true that "democracy" as a concept was developed in Europe and America. But when we take a broader look, we can see that deomocracy is actually the total accumulation of the long history of human beings throughout the globe.
I was deported back to Japan by the Suharto regime after I spent three and a half years as Jakarta bureau chief for Kyodo News, Japan’s primary wire-service news company. I believe Suharto hated me because I worked as a journalist who always monitored the authorities with a dose of healthy skepticism. In fact, I followed the widely accepted American guidelines of professional journalists.
Having said that, I am afraid that the U.S. news media at this moment are too patriotic. Public pressure, rather than state control, is the problem. It seems to me that the U.S. media is now a part of the government/corporate establishment in the war against Afganistan, due to the voluntary self-censorship in their own news departments. I know some news organizations have made utmost efforts to maintain their so-called objectivity and fairness. Yet I hope the American people will consider why the symbols of U.S. prosperity and the Pentagon were attacked by suicide hijackers: U.S. policy in the Middle East becoming more supportive of Israel after Bush took office can at least be listed as one crucial factor in why the U.S. was attacked Sept. 11.
It seems to me that the U.S. mainstream news media have almost completely omitted important background information about Osama bin Laden -- that, in fact, he was once a CIA "asset" working with the U.S. military against the Soviet Union. Almost none of this has been explained properly to the American public, whether intentionally or out of mere carelessness.
I also know that the U.S., along with the U.K., has long been considered a "colonial power" in the Middle East, so this kind of attack unfortunately may not be the last one against the U.S.
>From December 1-11, 1997, more than 160 nations met in Kyoto, Japan to negotiate binding limitations on greenhouse gases for the developed nations, pursuant to the objectives of the Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992. The outcome of the meeting was the Kyoto Protocol, in which the developed nations agreed to limit their greenhouse gas emissions, relative to the levels emitted in 1990. The United States agreed to reduce emissions from 1990 levels by 7 percent during the period 2008 to 2012.
After lengthy and exhausting negotiations, the Kyoto protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) was adopted by the Third Conference of the Parties to that convention (COP 3) in December 1977. However, the Bush adminstration refused to sign the convention.
Moreover, Secretary of State Colin Powell boycotted the recent World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR), held in Durban, South Africa. These are just two examples of the direction the U.S. government was heading in the months before Sept. 11.
I am afraid that billions of the world’s population who fall under the umbrella of "have nots" are envious of the U.S. as a symbol of what it means to "have." I hope the people of the U.S. will rationally look into the deeper reason why their country was attacked. This is the only way to remove the roots of the crime, as well as properly punish those who have committed such acts.
The Japanese government, for its part, has long been running on a wandering road. I am critical of Japan's role in offering some SDF assistance to the U.S. military. This is "America's war" -- not Japan's.
In a joint press conference following the Sept. 25 meeting of Bush and Koizumi, Bush expressed thanks for the Japanese proposal to cooperate with anti-terrorism measures in the fields of intelligence and financial support to Pakistan. Bush did not mention SDF participation at all. Koizumi clearly said that Bush did not ask him to send along the SDF, nor did he not take up the issue with Bush when he was asked by Japanese journalists.
The next morning's major newspapers in Japan reported that Koizumi had promised Bush that Japan would send the SDF to join in the anti-terrorist war. Clearly, the Japanese news media are becoming more and more like the controlled, submissive newspapers under Japan’s Empero Hirohito in the late 1930s.
After Prime Minister Koizumi returned to Tokyo following the Bush meeting, the Koizumi cabinet prepared a special anti-terrorism bill and submitted it to the Diet, and this can be called the "SDF overseas dispatch law." The bill also makes it possible for the SDF to guard U.S. military bases. According to Japanese law and regulations, that is the duty of the police, not soliders. “Why does Koizumi try so eagerly to send out the SDF?" many of my students have asked me.
Japan itself was not attacked by terrorists, although more than 20 Japanese citizens were victims in the attacks on U.S. soil. Even so, I think this Japanese government-sponsored bill is totally unconstitutional. "Whether or not we support U.S. war against terrorists, there is always the possibility that Japanese people will be attacked by terrorists anyway," Koizumi said in the Diet session on Oct. 12. But if we continue to offer military assistance to the U.S. against Muslim countries, I worry that such a possibility will dramatically increase.
We have only to look back and see that Koizumi -- who is now called "Japan's Hitler" by leftist extremists -- called for revising Japan's war-renouncing Constitution at his first press conference as premier on April 27. Article 9 of our precious Constitution not only denounces the threat of use of military force as a means of settling international disputes, but also prescribes that "land, sea and air forces, as well as other potential war forces, will never be maintained."
Koizumi said that Article 9 fails to reflect reality, noting that the nation has had its own military forces, the Self-Defense Forces, since 1954. "It is hard to support the argument that the SDF are not military forces. And I don't think Japan should be left unarmed, either," he said.
He is the first Japanese prime minister to officially announce that Japan should amend the constitution.He also made an official visit to Yasukuni Shrine on Aug. 13 this year as prime misnister, even though many people and governments of the Asia-Pacific region protested it. Yasukuni Shrine is a Shinto temple complex that is the “spiritual center” of Japan's right-wing, and it is the place where World War II, Class-A war criminals, including Hideki Tojo, the wartime Japanese premier, are interred.
Referring to the relationship between the new Japanese bill and the Japanese Constitution, the prime minister told the Diet on Oct. 9, 2001: "I admit that it is certainly ambiguous. If I am required to show its legal consistency and clarity, I would be at a loss for words.'' The SDF Law stipulates that the prime minister has the supreme authority to command the SDF. SDF members are dispatched under his order.
Koizumi told Japan’s TBS "News 23" TV program on Oct.12 that Japan had better make its armed forces a legitimate military power. With the launching of air strikes, calls to hasten the passage of the bill are growing within the government and ruling parties. Some people in Japan are calling for the dispatch of Maritime SDF warships to the Indian Ocean and elsewhere in a few days for the purpose of "gathering information.”
So you can see how the “rule of law” concept is being totally ignored by politicians and officials. The rightist media in Japan have started to slander those parliament members who oppose sending out the SDF.
The Asahi Shimbun newspaper, a more center/left newspaper, reported on Sept. 11 that Koizumi's cabinet had decided to send hundreds of SDF members to East Timor, which is under the United Nations Transitional Administrative Authority and which has concluded its first general election to set up a new parliament. However, there were serious problems back in Japan on how to comply with Japan's Constitution and laws that regulate sending SDF personnel overseas. The law in Japan as it stands is quite clear: The Japanese SDF can be sent abroad only on UN peacekeeping operations or to rescue Japanese citizens.
The former Japanese Imperial Army had invaded East Timor during World War � and the Japanese government had later supported former Indonesian President Suharto's dictatorial occupation for 24 years. Without looking back at its history of suppressing the East Timorese population, Koizumi -- representing the ultra-rightist faction in the ruling LDP -- apparently wanted to send the SDF back into East Timor, saying "We have to help refugees to return home."
It was a ridiculous decision for the Japanese government to send the SDF to East Timor at this moment. There were only two police officials working under UN PKO operations when the Indonesian army-trained "integration" militia killed thousands of innocent people and totally destroyed that society in September 1999, just after the East Timorese people favored independence from Portugal via a UN-led referendum. I covered that same referendum as a freelance journalist. These two civilian police officials left Dili just after the clashes started, but the Japanese Kyodo News correspondent and several NGO activists remained on for 10 more days.
Nobody in Japan now talks about the serious situation in East Timor. The Sept. 11 incidents in the U.S. are being fully used by the Japanese authorities to make the SDF a full-fledged Japanese army.
Mr. Koizumi 's home is located near the U.S. naval base at Yokosuka, Japan, and close to the SDF University. His father was a minister of Defence Affairs. "When I face difficulties, I always try to think of the Kamikaze suicide attackers of the Japanese Imperial Armed Forces. It gives me courage and passion to work for the state," the younger Koizumi often says. "I want to make SDF members feel confident that they are not working against the Constitution."
The public face of Mr. Koizumi has dramatically changed after the Sept. 11 incidents. He seems to love war. He knows that he and the LDP cabinet can hide their faults and help the economy recover by focusing on the Japanese commitment to America's new war.
I respect our Constitution, which was gifted to us by the U.S. Occupation forces after 1945. We Japanese finally could have democratic system -- albeit at the cost of 20 million dead people overseas and 3 million Japanese victims -- and I believe that our unique Constitution should be spread around the world in the 21st century.
Most Japanese newspapers nowadays claim that Japan could not contribute militarily to the Gulf War and that that has been a traumatic experience for the Japanese government and people. The so-called "Japanese Gulf War Syndrome" is nothing but a huge lie. Yes, many people criticized Japan's "yen-only" contribution to the Persian War.
Japan provided 13 billion US dollars to the United States while many non-allied countries kept neutral. President George Bush at that time said that he fully understood the limits of the Japanese constitution and thanked this financial assistance. I cannot recall that the general public here had discussed the necesssity of sending the SDF to the Persian Gulf, although many Japanese people insisted we should be neutral in the Gulf War. The Japanese government did not ask US-led multinationals to show the balance of this money. I still regret that we still don't know how this 13 billion dollars has been used. I think there must be a huge surplus in this somewhere.
Yet when the SDF went to the Middle East to remove mines, the Indonesians complained that Japan should remove the mines and gas weapons left in Southwest Asia first. Most Indonesians, who have experienced the invasion by the Japanese Imperial Army for three and a half years during World War II, were against a Japanese "yen contribution" itself.
This is only true for the ultra-rightist faction of the LDP as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which has been preparing to make Japan's Self-Defense Forces into a full-fledged Japanese Army.All in all, I think Japan has not acted as an independent country following its defeat in the war in 1945. More than 47,000 U.S. armed forces remain in Japan to this day. Besides South Korea, Japan is the only Eastern or Southwest Asian country to host U.S. military bases.
It is true that the Japanese SDF branches have essentially become armed forces. Successive LDP governments have beefed up the SDF without revising the Constitution at all. Furthermore, Japan’s Supreme Court has not made any judgment over this important matter.
Japan should be independent from the U.S. Its military alliance with the U.S. is blatantly against our Constituion. We need to make a timetable for all U.S. forces to withdraw from Japan first. Then we have to decide whether we will continue to keep our war-renouncing Article 9 in the Constitution -- or do we have our own army with the capability of possessing nuclear weapons?
In my opinion, Japan should be a leader of the neutral and non-allied countries. Many conservative politicians use the word "seiyaku" (restrictions) when the Constitution limits the activities of the SDF. Yet the Japanese Constitution is not only unique but very practical and ideal in this new century.
I am very much concerned these days by the Japanese government, and about how most Japanese people tend to ignore Article 9 of our precious Constitution. About 80 percent or more of the Japanese people still reportedly support the government led by Koizumi, while 60 percent reportedly support the new SDF bill. But this shows how people do not know what is happening around them and how that decision will influence their lives in the future. Japan’s NHK-TV reports emanating from Washington D.C. these days are more pro-U.S. than CNN itself. The Japanese "lapdog press" is now clearly an extension of the Koizumi government in Japan.
In closing, the Japanese people must adopt the "rule of law" principle in politics. Due process in politics is absolutely necessary. Journalists are responsible in this process by monitoring what politicians are doing on behalf of the general public.
I strongly believe that the most important role of journalists is keep people fully informed so as to stop war, not to agitate people.
[END]
Copyright (c) 2001, Prof.Asano Ken'ichi's Seminar Last updated 2001.12.13