Japanese desire for military build-up is its conservatism and its sleeping imperialism

 August 3, 2022

Let's not be of the opinion that Taiwan is the only country in east Asia that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is visiting on this whirlwind trip through East Asia this week. She's also going to visit Japan later on, which raises the full complexity of the US history with Japan, which is painful, and disparate from the relationship between the US federal government and Japanese American residents during World War II. 

The US federal government did forcibly relocate Japanese Americans from the West Coast by executive order and military action during World War II, and they did entrap them into internment camps. It's raised significant questions of civil rights, but only after the fact: for instance, in the Korematsu case, and the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which granted monetary reparations to Japanese-Americans who had been imprisoned in the camps, and their descendents. Those reparations were a pittance compared to the reparations owed to African-Americans who are descendants of enslaved persons, but they were issued, in '88 and '99. A more recent case also invalidated Korematsu's whole reasoning, which once upon a time allowed the forcible relocation and imprisonment of US residents, (in Trump v. Hawaii); this is no longer allowed. The principle, I think, is that the US has a duty to residents residing in its territory, even Japanese Americans in that case, (Korematsu) and other non-naturalized immigrant populations, just by virtue of their residence in the territories governed by the United States.

But this issue should be completely separable from the war crimes committed by the Japanese state during World War II, and in general during it's militaristic and imperial period. Not only the things we have heard about, like the Nanjing Massacre, Korean comfort women, and the Bataan Death March, but also for earlier horrific imperialist crimes such as earlier incursions into Manchuria. In fact, Japan conducted an imperialist takeover and colonial occupation of Korea during its earlier imperial period, with all of the concomitant atrocities.

The fully admitted bad blood among East Asian nations due to history should be left aside, but it's also not sufficient to just say that East Asia is not a monolith, nor is it sufficient to say that individuals are not the same as their countries of origin, nor to just use the phrase "you are not your culture" (no matter how cogent that is for many people of color, especially those of Asian heritage). The relevant consideration is that there is a cultural mindset or worldview that is connected the national culture, and that has an undoubtable connection to relations between East Asian states. In this context, strictly on the level of state action, a discerning observer of East Asia who is unconnected to US military interest in East Asia (ironic as that may be) cannot but notice that the Japanese conservative government's recent belligerence and apparent desire to return to its militaristic and imperialistic past, is an extremely concerning return to these troubling historical grudges, on it's part. In this context, I'm not sure why we would be thinking we could or should be egging on Japan to want to participate in any military endeavor through covert partnership with the US military occupation.