Mr. Obama conferred with Japan’s Prime Minister Abe on 24 April, but the
joint communique was issued only a few minutes before his departure for Seoul
the next day, showing how the discussions between the two came across with difficulties.
The particular difficulties were in the area of trade, centred around
the possible TPP agreements. The US were
putting enormous pressure for lowering the Japanese tariffs on the five items,
i.e., rice, wheat, sugar, meat and milk products. These are the life and death problem for many
of our farmers, who have been putting up a stiff fight against our own
government. The chief US negotiator is
reported to have mentioned ‘breakthrough’, and it makes us suspect that there
could be an untold story about the negotiations, but officially our government
has not yielded yet, and let us hope that they would continue to do so.
On
the security question Obama said, for the first time as a US President, that the
Senkaku Islands have been under the Japanese rule, and as such are placed under
Article 5 of the Japan-US Security Treaty.
This would justify the US going into action on the Japanese side in case
of an external attack. Obama, however,
did not go further and said that the US would actually take such an action.
He had, of course, China in mind, which he is not visiting this time, and
took a great care in discussing the East Asian scene. On the question of the right of collective
self-defence also, a very fashionable subject in Japan today, while Abe said that
the matter is under study by his government so that the right would become
exercisable, presumably with the US, Obama simply said that he would support
such a study, but did not say that he supported the direction of the study
itself. Seen in this light we must say
that Abe is more war-like of the two. He
did not spell out any idea on how to ease the current tension in East Asia not
militarily or strategically but peacefully and politically, thus, I am afraid,
exposing the poverty of thought among our politicians.
Incidentally, Abe and the ruling LDP have recently started an argument
in connection with the right of collective self-defence which is, to say the
least, funny. Back in 1959, the Tokyo
District Court made the famous “Date(a surname) Judgment” to the effect that
the US military presence in Japan was against the Article 9 of the Constitution
prohibiting the state to have any fighting potential. The astonished Japanese and the US
governments put pressure on the Supreme Court(which itself is a matter of great
shame) to do something about it.
Thereupon it passed the “Sunagawa(a place name) Judgment” later in that
year. It says that the Article 9 does
not deny Japan’s right for self-defence, the stationing of foreign troops in
Japan outside the Japanese command cannot be called Japan’s fighting potential,
and Japan may exercise her right of self-defence through the US military
presence in Japan. Apparently both of
them discuss Japan’s right of individual self-defence, but not of collective self-defence. The LDP, however, have chosen to take it that
they, especially the latter by the Supreme Court, have admitted that Japan has
both types as is defined in Article 51 of the UN Charter. This is startling as back in 1959 nobody
dreamt of discussing the collective self-defence. The LDP is thus really running short of their
intellectual resources.
