Mr. Magosaki (surname) Ukeru, born in 1943, is a retired diplomat of Japan. He is very critical of Japan's politics, particularly of diplomacy. In recent years he wrote one book after another very rapidly to express these views to give a warning to our people. It is very rare that a bureaucrat of his standing, a former ambassador to several countries, entertains, let alone expresses, such critical views. They are, moreover, logical, well-based, and worth listening to.
I have read three of these books, one of them by himself and the other two the record of his dialogue with one of the leaders of Japan's non-governmental Right Wing and a New York Times correspondent with a long experience in Japan, respectively. What follows is an excerpt of his salient views expressed in these books.
He says, together with the American correspondent, Mr. Martin Fackler, that the Japanese establishment do not represent the Japanese public opinion to their US counterpart, nor do they seriously try to ascertain the latter's view. They are dealing only with a handful of the 'Japan Handlers', people like Armitage and Nye, who are often out of the US government and are not in a position to represent the US views. Sometimes they are making money out of this particular contact. Fackler has even gone to the extent of listing 28 American names, with annotation, Senators and others, as an appendix to their dialogue whom Japan may well establish contact to their profit. Koreans and the Chinese are making a much wider contact there on their own. But Japan is taking what a narrow circle of these several people say almost as an order, and trying to please them. This has greatly distorted the Japan-US relations.
Concerning the territorial issues Japan is facing, the Kurils, Magosaki says, should be returned to Russia as a whole in accordance to the letters of the Peace Treaty, although this writer is not convinced as these Islands had not be taken as the result of any war by Japan in the past and had been peacefully exchanged with Sakhalin by a treaty of 1875 with Russia, and Russia had no reason to claim that they are their territory. Did not the Allied countries declare that, although Japan should be deprived of those portions of her territory which she took from her neighbours by aggression, the War itself was not a war for their own territorial expansion?
He warns that the Senkaku issue should be peacefully solved with China, as, contrary to what is widely believed in Japan, it would be easy for China to inactivate Japan's Self-Defence Forces by their far superior(numerically) force of bombers and missiles capable of destroying the airfields in Japan, and the US forces would not come to the rescue of Japan, as they are not looking at China as their enemy. He stresses that the record of dialogue has been kept secret by Japan government with China on the Senkaku and with Russia on the Kurils. He also says that, as there is a treaty with China on fishing, Japan should not have captured their fishing boats invoking Japan's domestic law.
On the general political situation, he says that those elements within the Conservative forces, particularly the LDP, which had stood for a relatively less armament and more economic growth, have disappeared by now, and those which stand for more armament and more rightest policies even at the expense of socio-economic equality have now centred around Prime Minister Abe and they are the almost only significant elements in the LDP. He is not satisfied. Particularly he is very unhappy with the present situation in which the mass media functions under an already strong restraint on the freedom of expression. The media has become an entrenched vested interest itself. He also feels that under the circumstances there will be a stronger voice in Okinawa for independence, at least for separation from Japan
Magosaki, Fackler, and the rightest Suzuki Kunio all have got something interesting to say about the imperial household, but we will discuss it some other time.. ,
I have read three of these books, one of them by himself and the other two the record of his dialogue with one of the leaders of Japan's non-governmental Right Wing and a New York Times correspondent with a long experience in Japan, respectively. What follows is an excerpt of his salient views expressed in these books.
He says, together with the American correspondent, Mr. Martin Fackler, that the Japanese establishment do not represent the Japanese public opinion to their US counterpart, nor do they seriously try to ascertain the latter's view. They are dealing only with a handful of the 'Japan Handlers', people like Armitage and Nye, who are often out of the US government and are not in a position to represent the US views. Sometimes they are making money out of this particular contact. Fackler has even gone to the extent of listing 28 American names, with annotation, Senators and others, as an appendix to their dialogue whom Japan may well establish contact to their profit. Koreans and the Chinese are making a much wider contact there on their own. But Japan is taking what a narrow circle of these several people say almost as an order, and trying to please them. This has greatly distorted the Japan-US relations.
Concerning the territorial issues Japan is facing, the Kurils, Magosaki says, should be returned to Russia as a whole in accordance to the letters of the Peace Treaty, although this writer is not convinced as these Islands had not be taken as the result of any war by Japan in the past and had been peacefully exchanged with Sakhalin by a treaty of 1875 with Russia, and Russia had no reason to claim that they are their territory. Did not the Allied countries declare that, although Japan should be deprived of those portions of her territory which she took from her neighbours by aggression, the War itself was not a war for their own territorial expansion?
He warns that the Senkaku issue should be peacefully solved with China, as, contrary to what is widely believed in Japan, it would be easy for China to inactivate Japan's Self-Defence Forces by their far superior(numerically) force of bombers and missiles capable of destroying the airfields in Japan, and the US forces would not come to the rescue of Japan, as they are not looking at China as their enemy. He stresses that the record of dialogue has been kept secret by Japan government with China on the Senkaku and with Russia on the Kurils. He also says that, as there is a treaty with China on fishing, Japan should not have captured their fishing boats invoking Japan's domestic law.
On the general political situation, he says that those elements within the Conservative forces, particularly the LDP, which had stood for a relatively less armament and more economic growth, have disappeared by now, and those which stand for more armament and more rightest policies even at the expense of socio-economic equality have now centred around Prime Minister Abe and they are the almost only significant elements in the LDP. He is not satisfied. Particularly he is very unhappy with the present situation in which the mass media functions under an already strong restraint on the freedom of expression. The media has become an entrenched vested interest itself. He also feels that under the circumstances there will be a stronger voice in Okinawa for independence, at least for separation from Japan
Magosaki, Fackler, and the rightest Suzuki Kunio all have got something interesting to say about the imperial household, but we will discuss it some other time.. ,
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