Japan brushes up its martial arts

Press, 23 June 1978, Page 12

Japan brushes up its martial arts

By

ROBERT WHYMAN,

r, Tokyo, in the "Guardian.” London

Japan’s Minister for Defence, Mr Shin Kanemaru, who is visiting Europe for talks with N.A.T.O. leaders, and senior United States defence officials, is known for his outspoken anti-Soviet views, his sympathy with Taiwan, and his advocacy of a more assertive Japanese military posture. It would be surprising if Moscow were not to regard this first visit by a directorgeneral of the Japanese Defence Agency — Mr Kanemaru’s formal title — to N.A.T.O. headquarters as part of a dark plot to weave Japan more closely into a Western strategy of encircling the Soviet Union.

This suspicion must be sharpened by, the hawkish nature of Japan’s defence chief, who in a mere six months in the job has all but delivered the coup de grace to Japan’s dying peace constitution. Admittedly, Article 9 of the post-war constitution — “Land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained” — has undergone severe rape by successive conservative governments. The violations have been masked by subterfuge. The army, navy and air force, after various euphemisms were tried, were delicately named “self defence forces.” Instead of a full-fledged minister of defence, Japan employs a minister without portfolio to look after them. Japan’s navy has no destroyers, only “escort ships,” and military is a word used only about other people’s armies.

In 1952 one of Mr Kanemaru’s predecessors had a terrible job getting Parliament to approve the introduction of howitzers. At that time, two years after the rebirth of Japan’s armed forces, a howitzer escaped the definition of “war potential” — just. A jet plane still did not. Preferences have been maintained in deference to the Japanese public’s deep distate for things military, dating from the defeat of 1945. But slogans like “the self-defence forces are illegal,” though still seen on walls and telegraph posts around military bases in Japan, are increasingly rare. External forces are in large part responsible for the increasing public acceptability of Japan’s military establishment — a turning point was the fall of Indochina in 1975 and last year the Soviet Union was particularly cantankerous towards Japanese fishing boats. Mr Kanemaru, in particular, has promoted the campaign to make the armed forces respectable and increased defence expenditure acceptable, by publicly identifying the Soviet Union as Japan’s which his predecessors cautiously avoided. Mr Kanemaru recently made a speech in which he called the Sea of Japan the “Sea of Russia” because of the constant appearances of Russian warships and other vessels. He said while Russia deploys 2000 aircraft in the Far East, Japan has only 400, and likened the disparity in forces to bamboo spears against machine guns.

The press is fed with an almost daily diet by the defence agency of Soviet military aircraft or warship movements close to Japan, stirring anti-Soviet feelings, and creating the right climate for increasing arms imports and production. ’ It is almost certainly no accident that in the week before Mr Kanemaru’s visit to Europe and Washington, a series of alarming (or alarmist?) intelligence reports were released to the press by Japan’s military establishment, about the modernisation and expansion of the Soviet Pacific fleet, whose headquarters were at Vladivostok, and about moves to upgrade Korsakov Port, 120 miles from Hokaido, into a major naval port, which would increase the strategic threat to Japan. In the same week, the defence agency reported that more than 1000 Russian troops were conducting exercises on Etorofu island, 75 miles from Hokaido. Officials made much of the fact that whereas the Soviet Union has carried out naval manoeuvres in the area previously, these were the first amphibious and airborne assault practices .on a Japanese claimed island. Mr Kanemaru is taking his intelligence reports on Soviet activity — an essential credential for nations seeking Western support these days — to General Alexander Haig and other leaders in Brussels, and to the American Secretary of Defence, Mr Harold Brown, in Washington. But as far as one can tell, their main

value — as Japanese defence officials must have calculated — will be in softening up Japanese public opinion for two major outlays likely to result from Mr Kanemaru’s visit. First, as Mr Kanemaru has already said publicly, Japan will have to increase its share of the cost of maintaining American forces in Japan to make up f.or the steady appreciation of the yen against the dollar. Second, Mr Kanemaru and Mr Brown are likely to discuss Japanese purchases of American military hardware, the most painless way known of mollifying American politicians who grumble at Japan’s “free ride” in de-

fence at the United States expense. The impression is of a Japan hastening its military buildup for political reasons and of a United States selling planes not for strategic purposes, but to balance its books. Yet, unlike in the recent past there are no angry howls from the opposition parties. These and other major purchases from the United States, or domestic production, may well push up Japan’s defence costs in a year or two considerably above the self-imposed ceiling of 1 per cent of gross national product. (Indeed, by international standards of comparison — including in

the defence budget items such as service pensions, married quarters, and welfare costs — the percentage is already closer to L 5). Fading memories of the war, the perception of a dangerous international environment caused by a Soviet military buildup and a reduction of American forces in the Far East, and the clever manipulation of public opinion by the militarv-industrial complex have made possible Japan's steady rearmament in violation of the constitution. Japan is already reckoned the strongest military nation in Asia, next to China and the way things are going, it will grow a lot stronger.