Seven decades since its defeat in the
Second World War, Japan is slowly re-emerging as an Asian power.
The war proved cataclysmic for the country;
its major cities were firebombed, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki suffered destruction
by atomic bombs.
The country was occupied by the United
States, and its armed forces dismantled. In 1951 the peace treaty between Japan
and 48 Allied countries which had fought against it was signed, restoring Japan’s
formal sovereignty. However, neither the Soviet Union nor China were a party to
it.
At
the same time, the U.S. and Japan signed a security treaty making Washington
responsible for Japan’s defence. It enabled U.S. troops to remain in Japan and
opened Japanese facilities as a staging area and logistics base for American
forces in the war then being waged in Korea.
The threat of Communist expansion is mostly gone, yet
the U.S. still stations some 47,000 troops in Japan, more
than half of them on Okinawa, in the Ryukyu Islands.
Discontent with the heavy American presence
among the 1.4 million Okinawans has grown, especially after incidents of
various crimes, including rapes, by American servicemen.
The Chinese are hoping to exploit this, and
some Chinese officials have gone so far as to claim that the entire Ryukyu
chain, which was once an independent kingdom and a vassal state of China’s,
should belong to them. The islands were annexed by Japan in 1879.
The pact between Japan and the U.S. allows
Tokyo to review the amount it spends on the upkeep of the bases every five
years. The current agreement is due to come up for renewal in March 2016.
Tokyo wants to reduce its spending so the
money can be used to help expand the country’s Self-Defense Forces.
Last September Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s
Liberal Democratic-led government passed a law that will allow Japan’s military
to fight in foreign conflicts, something forbidden until now.
Critics contend that this violates Japan’s
constitution and they fear that it will make the country America’s “deputy
sheriff” in Asia and perhaps dragged into an American war.
“We must not become accomplices to murder,”
declared Mizuho Fukushima of the Social Democratic Party during the acrimonious
debate in parliament
But Japan fears the growing military might
of China and worries that China may be prepared to risk war to fulfill its
territorial ambitions.
China is creating a deep-water navy with
aircraft carriers and scores of submarines as part of a geopolitical strategy
that is trying to reshape the power balance in Asia.
In the South China Sea, Beijing is dredging
coral reefs to build eight artificial islands that could be turned into
airfields in the disputed waters in the Spratly Archipelago. China insists it
has “indisputable sovereignty” over the islands, a claim denied by other
countries in the region.
They sit atop what are thought to be large
pools of unexploited oil and gas, are surrounded by rich fishing waters, and
situated astride some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.
In the East China Sea, the two countries
both claim some uninhabited islands the Japanese call the Senkakus and the
Chinese call the Diaoyus. The Chinese government states that they are an
integral part of China and has produced a timeline reaching back to the 15th
century, with historical documents offered as proof of China’s claim.
In turn, the Japanese government has
declared that “There is no doubt that the Senkaku Islands are clearly an
inherent part of the territory of Japan, in light of historical facts and based
upon international law.”
Prime Minister Abe met with Chinese
president Xi Jinping at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum last November, but they
only noted that “different positions exist” regarding the issue, which remains unresolved.
So Japan’s cabinet at the end of the year
approved a record-high military spending plan of $42.1 billion for 2016, to
counter China’s increasingly assertive activity.
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