asiapacificresearch--2020-06-08--Japan’s Streets of Rage: The 1960 US-Japan Security Treaty Uprising and the Origins of Contemporary

Japan’s Streets of Rage: The 1960 US-Japan Security Treaty Uprising and the Origins of Contemporary Japan

Sixty years ago this month , in June 1960 , the largest and longest popular protests in Japan ’ s modern history reached a stunning climax .
At issue was an attempt by Japan ’ s US-backed conservative government to pass a revised version of the US-Japan Security Treaty – the pact , abbreviated as Anpo in Japanese , which continues to allow the United States to maintain military bases and troops on Japanese soil to this day .
The 1960 treaty was a significant improvement over the original treaty , which had been imposed on Japan by the United @ @ @ @ @ @ @ US military occupation of Japan in 1952 .
For example , it added an explicit commitment that US troops stationed in Japan would defend Japan if Japan were attacked , and deleted an odious provision in the original treaty allowing US troops to be used to put down internal demonstrations in Japan .
However , many on the left in Japan , and even many conservatives , chafed under the neocolonial domination of the United States and hoped to get rid of the Security Treaty entirely , in order to chart a more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ War international system .
In order to show their dismay with any treaty whatsoever , these anti-treaty forces—which included leftist political parties , labor unions , student organizations , a variety of civic groups , and even some conservative business associations—sought to block passage of the revised treaty entirely , even though the new treaty was demonstrably better than the old one .
The anti-treaty movement began in the spring of 1959 , while the final details of the new treaty were still being negotiated , and gradually ramped up over the course @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the opposition Japan Socialist Party used all manner of delaying tactics to try to stall passage of the treaty in the Japanese National Diet .
By the time the protests climaxed in June 1960 , an estimated 30 million people—about one-third of Japan ’ s population at the time—participated in some manner in cities , villages , and towns all across the nation .
Although the 1960 Anpo protests ultimately failed to prevent passage of the treaty , which remains in effect to this day , they did succeed in bringing down @ @ @ @ @ @ @ grandfather of Japan ’ s present prime minister Abe Shinzō ) , as well as preventing a planned visit to Japan by US president Dwight D. Eisenhower .
The ambiguous outcome of these protests , and the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary reactions they engendered , hold many resonances with later protest movements such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in China and recent protest movements in Hong Kong and the United States .
My recent book Japan at the Crossroads : Conflict and Compromise after Anpo ( Harvard University Press , 2018 ) , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protests on US-Japan relations , Japanese domestic politics , and Japanese society , literature , and the arts .
The following excerpt , from the book ’ s introduction , describes the dramatic climax of the protests in June 1960 .
By the end of April 1960 , the Japanese left had essentially been fully mobilized .
The successful overthrow of dictatorial leaders that month in two other US Cold War satellite states , Turkey and especially neighboring South Korea , proved that unpopular regimes could be felled by peaceful mass movements , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the April 26 united action saw a significant increase in the size of the protests .
Then on May 1 , an American U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the USSR .
The resultant furor led to the dissipation of the amiable “ spirit of Camp David ” that had prevailed between the United States and the USSR since the meeting between Eisenhower and Nikita Khrushchev the previous September , and ultimately resulted in the cancellation of the Paris Summit and Eisenhower ’ s planned trip @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that several U-2 spy planes were based in Japan , and with tensions rising between the free world and communist camps , it seemed a particularly inopportune time to be entering into a military alliance with one of the two sides , let alone hosting a visit by Eisenhower himself .
Meanwhile Prime Minister Kishi began quietly laying plans of his own .
Having been repeatedly rebuffed in his efforts to bring the treaty to a vote on the floor of the Diet , in no small part because of the uncooperative stance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ party , Kishi decided that more desperate measures would be needed .
On April 14 , he established a top-secret “ Anpo Ratification Special Measures Committee ” ( Anpo Shōnin Tokubetsu Taisaku Iinkai ) within his own faction , rather aptly nicknamed the “ Anpo Kamikaze Squad ” ( Anpo Tokkōtai ) , to map out a strategy for forcing the treaty through the Diet at any cost .
Although debate continued for more than a month , from this point onward Kishi had clearly already given up on the debate and was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to ram the treaty through before the end of the current session.1 With the Diet session scheduled to end on May 26 and Eisenhower scheduled to arrive in Japan on June 19 for a visit commemorating the one hundredth anniversary of US-Japan friendship ( 1960 being the one hundredth anniversary of the first Japanese embassy to America ) , Kishi put his plans into action on May 19 , 1960 , exactly one month before Eisenhower was scheduled to arrive .
That morning , in a sudden “ sneak attack ” that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ without irony to the devastating Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 , the LDP suddenly moved to extend the Diet session for fifty days.2 In response , Socialist Diet members and their burly , recently hired “ secretaries ” launched a sit-in in the hallways to prevent Speaker of the Lower House Kiyose Ichirō from reaching the rostrum to call for a vote .
Barricaded in his office for several hours , Kiyose repeatedly appealed to the Socialists over the Diet building loudspeaker system to cease their disorderly behavior .
At 11:00 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of summoning 500 police officers into the Diet building .
In front of the eyes of a stunned nation watching a live feed on NHK television , the police physically removed each struggling Socialist Diet member from the building , one by one .
It was only the second time police had ever entered the Diet chambers , and the first and only time they ever physically removed Diet members.3 Finally , at 11:48 p.m. Kiyose , with the assistance of the police , was able to battle his way through the melee @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for a vote , upon which the Diet session extension was immediately passed by those LDP members present .
It was then that the second part of Kishi ’ s “ sneak attack ” was put into action .
At midnight on May 20 , just minutes after the extension was approved , Kiyose gaveled the new Diet session into order and immediately called for a vote on the treaty itself .
In a famous and indelible image , the NHK television camera captured the LDP Diet members raising their hands to vote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the right to show that all the seats in the other half of the chamber , where the opposition parties normally sat , were empty .
Everyone had been expecting Kishi to try to extend the Diet session , but few people , even within his own party , had realized that he was also planning to ratify the treaty at the same time .
This was a crafty maneuver because under Diet rules at the time , any treaty passed by the lower house would automatically be approved after thirty days @ @ @ @ @ @ @ house , as long as the Diet remained in session during that time .
By passing the treaty through the lower house on May 20 , Kishi ensured that the treaty would automatically be ratified at midnight on June 19 , just in time for Eisenhower ’ s arrival in Japan later that day .
This so-called May 19 incident sparked an intense nationwide uproar , as many people who had previously had no interest in the treaty issue or even favored treaty revision felt deep outrage at Kishi ’ s “ undemocratic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ almost a daily occurrence in Japanese cities , and the movement quickly swelled to include a variety of unaffiliated actors and spontaneous actions .
Support for the protests was running so high that the Sōhyō labor federation was able to organize three massive , nationwide general strikes of unprecedented size on June 4 , 15 , and 22 .
A defining characteristic of the protests after May 19 was that they had become less of an anti-treaty movement and more of an anti-Kishi movement .
Kishi was physically unattractive and had never been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , his choice of tactics on May 19 served as a vivid reminder of aspects of his past that nobody had entirely forgotten—namely , that he had served as vice minister of munitions in the Tōjō Hideki cabinet at the height of the Pacific War , and after defeat had been imprisoned by the US Occupation as a suspected class-A war criminal in the infamous Sugamo Prison in Tokyo pending trial before being depurged as part of the “ Reverse Course.
” It was a tribute to Kishi ’ s genius for backroom @ @ @ @ @ @ @ such a damning personal history to rise as high as the premiership less than a decade after being released from prison .
However , as brilliant as he was at backroom wheeling and dealing , he was almost equally unbrilliant at forging connections with the average citizen , especially in an increasingly televised age .
When his personal history was placed in context with his determined efforts to break the leftist Japan Teachers Union ( Nikkyōsō ) and revise Article 9 of the constitution , along with his mishandling of the 1958 Police @ @ @ @ @ @ @ easy sell for his opponents to paint the treaty revision as part of an insidious master plan by Kishi to remilitarize Japan and return to the prewar system.4 Among his other flaws , Kishi had never been particularly adept at maintaining friendly relations with the Japanese press , and after the May 19 uproar the media smelled blood and turned on him with a vengeance , with even conservative newspapers calling for his immediate resignation and the dissolution of the Diet .
Meanwhile , the Japanese business world ( zaikai ) , increasingly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protests might ultimately have on business and Japan ’ s international trade , began to put intense back-channel pressure on Kishi to resign as soon as possible .
By this point the anti-treaty/anti-Kishi movement had gathered such support and momentum that even ordinary citizens , with no affiliation to any particular organization , began joining the protests .
Much was made in the media of white-collar workers leaning out of their office windows to call out their support to the protesters , and housewives joining in marches with their baby carriages .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the new medium of television to bring the protest movement into the living room played its most significant role .
By June , newspaper reports described how schoolchildren had begun playing “ demonstration , ” marching around the schoolyard shouting the ubiquitous chant Anpo hantai !
( Down with Anpo ! )
.5 With massive protests occurring almost daily , a Yomiuri Shinbun editorial punned that in Japan , “ democracy ” ( demokurashii ) had come to mean “ living by demonstration ” ( demo-kurashi ) .6 After May 19 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Eisenhower was scheduled to arrive on the day the treaty would be automatically ratified , and sought to direct the protests toward preventing Eisenhower ’ s visit .
Thus when Eisenhower ’ s press secretary , James Hagerty , arrived at Haneda Airport on June 10 , the car carrying him , Ambassador Douglas MacArthur II ( the nephew of the general ) , and an aide encountered a crowd of more than 6,000 protesters blocking their way just outside the airport gates .
In what became known as the “ Hagerty incident @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the car with their placards and flagpoles , rocked it back and forth , cracked its windows , and smashed its tail lights .
Leaders climbed on the roof and led the crowd in chants of “ Hagerty , go home !
” ( Hagachii gō hōmu ) and “ Don ’ t come Ike !
” ( donto kamu Aiku ) until the car roof began to cave in .
Riot police were called in to try to clear a path for the car to escape , but were resisted with a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , after more than an hour , the three men managed to escape via a US Marines helicopter.7 Although a suggestion by Socialist Party chairman Asanuma Inejirō that MacArthur and Hagerty had deliberately driven into the crowd as a provocation was widely ridiculed by the Japanese press , a declassified embassy dispatch from MacArthur to the Department of State later revealed this to have been true.8 In any case , the Hagerty incident , particularly insofar as it represented a grave discourtesy to guests of the Japanese nation , came as a profound @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which public opinion , especially as reflected in editorials in the mainstream press , first began to turn against the protest movement .
A second , even larger shock resulted from the bloody clashes at the Diet on June 15 .
That day Sōhyō organized its second nationwide general strike , involving 6.4 million workers , with an estimated 30,000 shops closing down for the day in sympathy , 8,000 in Tokyo alone .
As usual , a massive daylong protest was held in front of the National Diet Building .
But this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had come before .
In a fateful moment on June 15 , students stormed the south gate of the Diet ( parliament ) building , eventually forcing their way in .
Here they are met with police water cannon .
Around midafternoon , a column of approximately 1,000 artists , thespians , writers , and critics assembled at Hibiya Park and marched to the Diet .
At 5:15 p.m. , as the column was marching from the Main Gate of the Diet to another gate to present petitions to sympathetic Socialist Party Diet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a large group of right-wing counterprotesters from the “ Imperial Restoration Action Corps ” ( Ishin Kōdō Tai ) .
The bulk of the assault fell on members of the Modern Drama Association ( Shingekijin Kaigi ) , who were attacked by burly men wielding wooden posts embedded with nails in addition to having their column of marchers rammed head-on by two trucks emblazoned with right-wing slogans .
The attackers were heard to yell , “ We ’ ll kill you !
” ( koroshite yaru ) and “ Beat them dead !
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , eighty people ( fifty-one men and twenty-nine women ) suffered injuries , including eleven who were hospitalized for three weeks or more .
Most injuries were to the back of the head , and one actor suffered permanent hearing loss .
Just minutes later , on the other side of the Diet compound , leftist student radicals smashed through the South Gate and swarmed into the Diet .
The police fell back and the students proceeded to give speeches and sing songs for more than an hour .
But just after 7:00 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , driving the students back toward the gate .
It was during this initial counterattack that a Tokyo University undergraduate , Kanba Michiko , was trampled to death .
News of her death spread quickly , and enraged the students .
The battle shifted to the Main Gate again , where the students repeatedly attacked and counterattacked long into the night .
Finally at 1:00 a.m. , the police were given permission to take more forceful measures .
Around 1:15 a.m. , the police set upon the students , as well as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reporters , with truncheons and tear gas .
Photographs from that night show the youthful bodies of the students , having been beaten bloody and unconscious , being carried away to ambulances .
The Diet compound was strewn with rocks , shoes , broken placards , and pools of blood and water , as well as eighteen wrecked paddy wagons the students had overturned and set on fire .
The June 15 incident horrified much of the nation , and most appalling of all was the death of Kanba Michiko .
Although Kanba @ @ @ @ @ @ @ person to be killed in a battle with police during the postwar period , her death was particularly shocking because she was from the upper-middle class , the daughter of a university professor , and she was a student at the elite Tokyo University .
Thus , her death was seen to be particularly wasteful in a way that , say , a mineworker ’ s might not have been .
Most importantly , however , she was female .
Until 1922 , women in Japan had been barred by law from participating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and even in the 1950s , after they had been theoretically liberated by the 1947 constitution , women had typically been prevented from participating in protest marches , on the excuse that it was too dangerous .
One reason women ’ s rights activists found the 1960 protests so inspiring was that , because they were viewed as a peaceful , broadly supported movement to protect democracy , many activist women were finally allowed to participate in protest marches for the first time in their lives ( although in most cases , they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , for safety ) .
The unspoken subtext to the shock voluminously expressed over the general “ violence ” of June 15 was that whereas such violent clashes might be tolerated to an extent if they had involved only men , violence could not be countenanced when it involved women—Kanba Michiko in particular , but also the theater actresses from the Modern Drama Association who had been battered by the right-wing counterprotesters .
In any case , the escalation perpetrated by the students and right-wing hooligans on June 15 finally provided the shock @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Kishi held out for an entire day following the June 15 bloodshed , conferring with his cabinet deep into the evening of the 16th .
According to several eyewitness accounts , the head of the National Police Agency , Kashiwamura Nobuo , informed Kishi that in light of the recent violence , he did not have confidence that the police could guarantee President Eisenhower ’ s safety .
Enraged , Kishi responded that if the police were not up to the task , he would have to call out the Self-Defense Forces @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Indeed , Kishi informed the Americans that one regiment ( about 2,000 men ) in the Tokyo area had already been placed on alert and that he planned to mobilize an entire division for Eisenhower ’ s visit.9 However , Defense Agency chief Akagi Munemori was strongly opposed , arguing that deploying the Self-Defense Forces would be a provocation that might instigate a popular uprising .
Lacking the support of the two key figures of his defense chief and the head of the national police , Kishi was forced to give in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to “ postpone ” his visit , and indicating that he himself would resign following the final ratification of the treaty .
On June 18 , the day before the treaty was due to be automatically passed by the upper house , the protests reached their greatest size .
In Tokyo alone an estimated 330,000 demonstrators jammed the streets around the Diet .
At first the protests were as boisterous as usual , but as the final deadline of midnight , June 19 approached , the crowds became solemn , as they realized @ @ @ @ @ @ @ movement had failed to block the treaty .
It was , in the words of the writer and critic Takeda Michitarō , “ a kind of magnificent funeral for the entire postwar experience.
” 10 Many of the protesters sat where they were in silence until dawn before finally going their separate ways , stunned that the expenditure of so much energy and enthusiasm had seemingly all been for naught .
With the resignation of Kishi himself on July 15 , the energy went out of the movement and the protests died away @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the 1960 Anpo protests on US-Japan relations and Japanese politics , society , and culture was only just beginning .
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Nick Kapur received his Ph.D. in history from Harvard University and is presently Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University , Camden , where he teaches Japanese and East Asian history .
3 The first time was on June 2 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ law that did away with the locally elected school boards established during the US Occupation in favor of more centralized decision-making at the prefectural level .
On June 3 , 1954 , police entered the Diet building , but not the actual Diet chambers .
See Eiko Maruko Siniawer , Ruffians , Yakuza , Nationalists : The Violent Politics of Modern Japan , 1860–1960 ( Ithaca , N.Y. : Cornell University Press , 2008 ) , 143–150 .
4 For example , Fukumoto Kunio , who at the time was the personal assistant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Shiina Etsusaburō , recalled being dispatched by Shiina at the height of the crisis to meet with a group of top bankers at a geisha house in Yanagibashi where he was told , “ The general desire of the financial world is that Kishi should resign and that Ike ’ s visit should be cancelled.
” He was also told , “ Please replace [ Kishi ] with Ikeda [ Hayato ] .
” When Shiina reported this to Kishi , Kishi reportedly became enraged and threatened to cut off loans from the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Omote butai , ura butai : Fukumoto Kunio kaikoroku ( Tokyo : Kodansha , 2007 ) , 32–34 .
6 Quoted in Edward Whittemore , The Press in Japan Today : A Case Study ( Columbia : University of South Carolina Press , 1961 ) , 54–55 .
7 This incident is described in the records of the Tokyo District Court , which are cited in Tanaka Jirō , Satō Isao , and Nomura Jirō , eds.
, Sengo seiji saiban shiroku , 5 vols .
( Tokyo : Daiichi Hōki Shuppan , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ MacArthur to Department of State , June 10 , 1960 , in Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States 1958–1960 , vol .
18 , Japan ; Korea , ed .
Madeline Chi and Louis J. Smith ( Washington , D.C. : Government Printing Office , 1994 ) , 331–332 ; and MacArthur to Department of State , June 12 , 1960 , reproduced in Documents on United States Policy toward Japan III : Japanese Internal Affairs as Seen by the American Diplomats , 1960 , 9 vols.
, ed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tokyo : Kashiwa Shobō , 1997 ) , 2:219–222 .
9 MacArthur to Secretary of State , June 16 , 1960 , White House Office Records , Records of the Staff Secretary 1952–61 , International Series , Box 9 , Folder “ Japan—Vol .
III of III ( 1 ) , ” Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library .

Sixty years ago this month, in June 1960, the largest and longest popular protests in Japan’s modern history reached a stunning climax. At issue was an attempt by Japan’s US-backed conservative government to pass a revised version of the US-Japan Security Treaty – the pact, abbreviated as Anpo in Japanese, which continues to allow the United States to maintain military bases and troops on Japanese soil to this day. The 1960 treaty was a significant improvement over the original treaty, which had been imposed on Japan by the United States as a condition for ending the US military occupation of Japan in 1952. For example, it added an explicit commitment that US troops stationed in Japan would defend Japan if Japan were attacked, and deleted an odious provision in the original treaty allowing US troops to be used to put down internal demonstrations in Japan. However, many on the left in Japan, and even many conservatives, chafed under the neocolonial domination of the United States and hoped to get rid of the Security Treaty entirely, in order to chart a more independent course for Japan within the Cold War international system. In order to show their dismay with any treaty whatsoever, these anti-treaty forces—which included leftist political parties, labor unions, student organizations, a variety of civic groups, and even some conservative business associations—sought to block passage of the revised treaty entirely, even though the new treaty was demonstrably better than the old one.
The anti-treaty movement began in the spring of 1959, while the final details of the new treaty were still being negotiated, and gradually ramped up over the course of 1959 and into 1960. Meanwhile, the opposition Japan Socialist Party used all manner of delaying tactics to try to stall passage of the treaty in the Japanese National Diet. By the time the protests climaxed in June 1960, an estimated 30 million people—about one-third of Japan’s population at the time—participated in some manner in cities, villages, and towns all across the nation. Although the 1960 Anpo protests ultimately failed to prevent passage of the treaty, which remains in effect to this day, they did succeed in bringing down reviled prime minister Kishi Nobusuke (the grandfather of Japan’s present prime minister Abe Shinzō), as well as preventing a planned visit to Japan by US president Dwight D. Eisenhower. The ambiguous outcome of these protests, and the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary reactions they engendered, hold many resonances with later protest movements such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in China and recent protest movements in Hong Kong and the United States.
My recent book Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo (Harvard University Press, 2018) , charts the wide-ranging impact of these massive protests on US-Japan relations, Japanese domestic politics, and Japanese society, literature, and the arts. The following excerpt, from the book’s introduction, describes the dramatic climax of the protests in June 1960.
By the end of April 1960, the Japanese left had essentially been fully mobilized. The successful overthrow of dictatorial leaders that month in two other US Cold War satellite states, Turkey and especially neighboring South Korea, proved that unpopular regimes could be felled by peaceful mass movements, further fueling the protests in Japan, and the April 26 united action saw a significant increase in the size of the protests. Then on May 1, an American U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the USSR. The resultant furor led to the dissipation of the amiable “spirit of Camp David” that had prevailed between the United States and the USSR since the meeting between Eisenhower and Nikita Khrushchev the previous September, and ultimately resulted in the cancellation of the Paris Summit and Eisenhower’s planned trip to Moscow. It came to light that several U-2 spy planes were based in Japan, and with tensions rising between the free world and communist camps, it seemed a particularly inopportune time to be entering into a military alliance with one of the two sides, let alone hosting a visit by Eisenhower himself.
Meanwhile Prime Minister Kishi began quietly laying plans of his own. Having been repeatedly rebuffed in his efforts to bring the treaty to a vote on the floor of the Diet, in no small part because of the uncooperative stance taken by disgruntled factions within his own party, Kishi decided that more desperate measures would be needed. On April 14, he established a top-secret “Anpo Ratification Special Measures Committee” (Anpo Shōnin Tokubetsu Taisaku Iinkai) within his own faction, rather aptly nicknamed the “Anpo Kamikaze Squad” (Anpo Tokkōtai), to map out a strategy for forcing the treaty through the Diet at any cost. Although debate continued for more than a month, from this point onward Kishi had clearly already given up on the debate and was committed to taking “special measures” to ram the treaty through before the end of the current session.1
With the Diet session scheduled to end on May 26 and Eisenhower scheduled to arrive in Japan on June 19 for a visit commemorating the one hundredth anniversary of US-Japan friendship (1960 being the one hundredth anniversary of the first Japanese embassy to America), Kishi put his plans into action on May 19, 1960, exactly one month before Eisenhower was scheduled to arrive. That morning, in a sudden “sneak attack” that the leftist intellectual Hidaka Rokurō would later compare without irony to the devastating Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the LDP suddenly moved to extend the Diet session for fifty days.2
In response, Socialist Diet members and their burly, recently hired “secretaries” launched a sit-in in the hallways to prevent Speaker of the Lower House Kiyose Ichirō from reaching the rostrum to call for a vote. Barricaded in his office for several hours, Kiyose repeatedly appealed to the Socialists over the Diet building loudspeaker system to cease their disorderly behavior. At 11:00 p.m., Kiyose took the drastic measure of summoning 500 police officers into the Diet building. In front of the eyes of a stunned nation watching a live feed on NHK television, the police physically removed each struggling Socialist Diet member from the building, one by one. It was only the second time police had ever entered the Diet chambers, and the first and only time they ever physically removed Diet members.3
Finally, at 11:48 p.m. Kiyose, with the assistance of the police, was able to battle his way through the melee to the lower house rostrum and gavel for a vote, upon which the Diet session extension was immediately passed by those LDP members present. It was then that the second part of Kishi’s “sneak attack” was put into action. At midnight on May 20, just minutes after the extension was approved, Kiyose gaveled the new Diet session into order and immediately called for a vote on the treaty itself. In a famous and indelible image, the NHK television camera captured the LDP Diet members raising their hands to vote their approval, and then swung dramatically to the right to show that all the seats in the other half of the chamber, where the opposition parties normally sat, were empty.
Everyone had been expecting Kishi to try to extend the Diet session, but few people, even within his own party, had realized that he was also planning to ratify the treaty at the same time. This was a crafty maneuver because under Diet rules at the time, any treaty passed by the lower house would automatically be approved after thirty days, even without action by the upper house, as long as the Diet remained in session during that time. By passing the treaty through the lower house on May 20, Kishi ensured that the treaty would automatically be ratified at midnight on June 19, just in time for Eisenhower’s arrival in Japan later that day.
This so-called May 19 incident sparked an intense nationwide uproar, as many people who had previously had no interest in the treaty issue or even favored treaty revision felt deep outrage at Kishi’s “undemocratic” actions. Immense street protests became almost a daily occurrence in Japanese cities, and the movement quickly swelled to include a variety of unaffiliated actors and spontaneous actions. Support for the protests was running so high that the Sōhyō labor federation was able to organize three massive, nationwide general strikes of unprecedented size on June 4, 15, and 22.
A defining characteristic of the protests after May 19 was that they had become less of an anti-treaty movement and more of an anti-Kishi movement. Kishi was physically unattractive and had never been particularly popular with the masses. Moreover, his choice of tactics on May 19 served as a vivid reminder of aspects of his past that nobody had entirely forgotten—namely, that he had served as vice minister of munitions in the Tōjō Hideki cabinet at the height of the Pacific War, and after defeat had been imprisoned by the US Occupation as a suspected class-A war criminal in the infamous Sugamo Prison in Tokyo pending trial before being depurged as part of the “Reverse Course.”
It was a tribute to Kishi’s genius for backroom politics that he was able to overcome such a damning personal history to rise as high as the premiership less than a decade after being released from prison. However, as brilliant as he was at backroom wheeling and dealing, he was almost equally unbrilliant at forging connections with the average citizen, especially in an increasingly televised age. When his personal history was placed in context with his determined efforts to break the leftist Japan Teachers Union (Nikkyōsō) and revise Article 9 of the constitution, along with his mishandling of the 1958 Police Duties Bill, it was a relatively easy sell for his opponents to paint the treaty revision as part of an insidious master plan by Kishi to remilitarize Japan and return to the prewar system.4
Among his other flaws, Kishi had never been particularly adept at maintaining friendly relations with the Japanese press, and after the May 19 uproar the media smelled blood and turned on him with a vengeance, with even conservative newspapers calling for his immediate resignation and the dissolution of the Diet. Meanwhile, the Japanese business world (zaikai), increasingly concerned about the disruptive effect the ever-larger protests might ultimately have on business and Japan’s international trade, began to put intense back-channel pressure on Kishi to resign as soon as possible.
By this point the anti-treaty/anti-Kishi movement had gathered such support and momentum that even ordinary citizens, with no affiliation to any particular organization, began joining the protests. Much was made in the media of white-collar workers leaning out of their office windows to call out their support to the protesters, and housewives joining in marches with their baby carriages. It was at this stage that the capacity of the new medium of television to bring the protest movement into the living room played its most significant role. By June, newspaper reports described how schoolchildren had begun playing “demonstration,” marching around the schoolyard shouting the ubiquitous chant Anpo hantai! (Down with Anpo!).5 With massive protests occurring almost daily, a Yomiuri Shinbun editorial punned that in Japan, “democracy” (demokurashii) had come to mean “living by demonstration” (demo-kurashi).6
After May 19, some protestors seized on the fact that Eisenhower was scheduled to arrive on the day the treaty would be automatically ratified, and sought to direct the protests toward preventing Eisenhower’s visit. Thus when Eisenhower’s press secretary, James Hagerty, arrived at Haneda Airport on June 10, the car carrying him, Ambassador Douglas MacArthur II (the nephew of the general), and an aide encountered a crowd of more than 6,000 protesters blocking their way just outside the airport gates. In what became known as the “Hagerty incident,” the protesters rained blows on the car with their placards and flagpoles, rocked it back and forth, cracked its windows, and smashed its tail lights. Leaders climbed on the roof and led the crowd in chants of “Hagerty, go home!” (Hagachii gō hōmu) and “Don’t come Ike!” (donto kamu Aiku) until the car roof began to cave in. Riot police were called in to try to clear a path for the car to escape, but were resisted with a fierce round of rock throwing. Finally, after more than an hour, the three men managed to escape via a US Marines helicopter.7
Although a suggestion by Socialist Party chairman Asanuma Inejirō that MacArthur and Hagerty had deliberately driven into the crowd as a provocation was widely ridiculed by the Japanese press, a declassified embassy dispatch from MacArthur to the Department of State later revealed this to have been true.8 In any case, the Hagerty incident, particularly insofar as it represented a grave discourtesy to guests of the Japanese nation, came as a profound shock and represented a turning point after which public opinion, especially as reflected in editorials in the mainstream press, first began to turn against the protest movement.
A second, even larger shock resulted from the bloody clashes at the Diet on June 15. That day Sōhyō organized its second nationwide general strike, involving 6.4 million workers, with an estimated 30,000 shops closing down for the day in sympathy, 8,000 in Tokyo alone. As usual, a massive daylong protest was held in front of the National Diet Building. But this protest would be different from those that had come before.
In a fateful moment on June 15, students stormed the south gate of the Diet (parliament) building, eventually forcing their way in. Here they are met with police water cannon.
Around midafternoon, a column of approximately 1,000 artists, thespians, writers, and critics assembled at Hibiya Park and marched to the Diet. At 5:15 p.m., as the column was marching from the Main Gate of the Diet to another gate to present petitions to sympathetic Socialist Party Diet members, the marchers were attacked by a large group of right-wing counterprotesters from the “Imperial Restoration Action Corps” (Ishin Kōdō Tai). The bulk of the assault fell on members of the Modern Drama Association (Shingekijin Kaigi), who were attacked by burly men wielding wooden posts embedded with nails in addition to having their column of marchers rammed head-on by two trucks emblazoned with right-wing slogans. The attackers were heard to yell, “We’ll kill you!” (koroshite yaru) and “Beat them dead!” (tatakikorose). In total, eighty people (fifty-one men and twenty-nine women) suffered injuries, including eleven who were hospitalized for three weeks or more. Most injuries were to the back of the head, and one actor suffered permanent hearing loss.
Just minutes later, on the other side of the Diet compound, leftist student radicals smashed through the South Gate and swarmed into the Diet. The police fell back and the students proceeded to give speeches and sing songs for more than an hour. But just after 7:00 p.m., the police massed and retaliated, driving the students back toward the gate. It was during this initial counterattack that a Tokyo University undergraduate, Kanba Michiko, was trampled to death. News of her death spread quickly, and enraged the students. The battle shifted to the Main Gate again, where the students repeatedly attacked and counterattacked long into the night.
Finally at 1:00 a.m., the police were given permission to take more forceful measures. Around 1:15 a.m., the police set upon the students, as well as a number of bystanders including middle-aged professors and reporters, with truncheons and tear gas. Photographs from that night show the youthful bodies of the students, having been beaten bloody and unconscious, being carried away to ambulances. The Diet compound was strewn with rocks, shoes, broken placards, and pools of blood and water, as well as eighteen wrecked paddy wagons the students had overturned and set on fire.
The June 15 incident horrified much of the nation, and most appalling of all was the death of Kanba Michiko. Although Kanba was neither the first nor the last person to be killed in a battle with police during the postwar period, her death was particularly shocking because she was from the upper-middle class, the daughter of a university professor, and she was a student at the elite Tokyo University. Thus, her death was seen to be particularly wasteful in a way that, say, a mineworker’s might not have been. Most importantly, however, she was female. Until 1922, women in Japan had been barred by law from participating in political meetings of any kind, and even in the 1950s, after they had been theoretically liberated by the 1947 constitution, women had typically been prevented from participating in protest marches, on the excuse that it was too dangerous. One reason women’s rights activists found the 1960 protests so inspiring was that, because they were viewed as a peaceful, broadly supported movement to protect democracy, many activist women were finally allowed to participate in protest marches for the first time in their lives (although in most cases, they were required to march at the rear, for safety). The unspoken subtext to the shock voluminously expressed over the general “violence” of June 15 was that whereas such violent clashes might be tolerated to an extent if they had involved only men, violence could not be countenanced when it involved women—Kanba Michiko in particular, but also the theater actresses from the Modern Drama Association who had been battered by the right-wing counterprotesters.
In any case, the escalation perpetrated by the students and right-wing hooligans on June 15 finally provided the shock necessary to bring down the Kishi cabinet. Kishi held out for an entire day following the June 15 bloodshed, conferring with his cabinet deep into the evening of the 16th. According to several eyewitness accounts, the head of the National Police Agency, Kashiwamura Nobuo, informed Kishi that in light of the recent violence, he did not have confidence that the police could guarantee President Eisenhower’s safety. Enraged, Kishi responded that if the police were not up to the task, he would have to call out the Self-Defense Forces to suppress the protesters and protect Eisenhower. Indeed, Kishi informed the Americans that one regiment (about 2,000 men) in the Tokyo area had already been placed on alert and that he planned to mobilize an entire division for Eisenhower’s visit.9 However, Defense Agency chief Akagi Munemori was strongly opposed, arguing that deploying the Self-Defense Forces would be a provocation that might instigate a popular uprising. Lacking the support of the two key figures of his defense chief and the head of the national police, Kishi was forced to give in, announcing that he would ask Eisenhower to “postpone” his visit, and indicating that he himself would resign following the final ratification of the treaty.
On June 18, the day before the treaty was due to be automatically passed by the upper house, the protests reached their greatest size. In Tokyo alone an estimated 330,000 demonstrators jammed the streets around the Diet. At first the protests were as boisterous as usual, but as the final deadline of midnight, June 19 approached, the crowds became solemn, as they realized that despite all their efforts, the movement had failed to block the treaty. It was, in the words of the writer and critic Takeda Michitarō, “a kind of magnificent funeral for the entire postwar experience.”10 Many of the protesters sat where they were in silence until dawn before finally going their separate ways, stunned that the expenditure of so much energy and enthusiasm had seemingly all been for naught. With the resignation of Kishi himself on July 15, the energy went out of the movement and the protests died away. However, the wide-ranging impact of the 1960 Anpo protests on US-Japan relations and Japanese politics, society, and culture was only just beginning.
*
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Nick Kapur received his Ph.D. in history from Harvard University and is presently Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University, Camden, where he teaches Japanese and East Asian history.
Notes
1 Hirata Tetsuo, Gendai Nihon no keisei (Tokyo: Kōkura Shobō, 1983), 147.
2 Hidaka Rokurō, ed., 1960-nen 5-gatsu 19-nichi (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1960), 46.
3 The first time was on June 2, 1956, in a clash over the law that did away with the locally elected school boards established during the US Occupation in favor of more centralized decision-making at the prefectural level. On June 3, 1954, police entered the Diet building, but not the actual Diet chambers. See Eiko Maruko Siniawer, Ruffians, Yakuza, Nationalists: The Violent Politics of Modern Japan, 1860–1960 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008), 143–150.
4 For example, Fukumoto Kunio, who at the time was the personal assistant of Kishi’s chief cabinet secretary Shiina Etsusaburō, recalled being dispatched by Shiina at the height of the crisis to meet with a group of top bankers at a geisha house in Yanagibashi where he was told, “The general desire of the financial world is that Kishi should resign and that Ike’s visit should be cancelled.” He was also told, “Please replace [Kishi] with Ikeda [Hayato].” When Shiina reported this to Kishi, Kishi reportedly became enraged and threatened to cut off loans from the Japan Development Bank. Fukumoto Kunio, Omote butai, ura butai: Fukumoto Kunio kaikoroku (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2007), 32–34.
5 Asahi Shinbun Hyakunen-shi Henshū Iinkai, ed., Asahi Shinbun shashi: Shōwa sengo hen (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1994), 289.
6 Quoted in Edward Whittemore, The Press in Japan Today: A Case Study (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1961), 54–55.
7 This incident is described in the records of the Tokyo District Court, which are cited in Tanaka Jirō, Satō Isao, and Nomura Jirō, eds., Sengo seiji saiban shiroku, 5 vols. (Tokyo: Daiichi Hōki Shuppan, 1980), 3:245–246.
8 See MacArthur to Department of State, June 10, 1960, in Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States 1958–1960, vol. 18, Japan; Korea, ed. Madeline Chi and Louis J. Smith (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1994), 331–332; and MacArthur to Department of State, June 12, 1960, reproduced in Documents on United States Policy toward Japan III: Japanese Internal Affairs as Seen by the American Diplomats, 1960, 9 vols., ed. Ishii Osamu and Ono Naoki (Tokyo: Kashiwa Shobō, 1997), 2:219–222.
9 MacArthur to Secretary of State, June 16, 1960, White House Office Records, Records of the Staff Secretary 1952–61, International Series, Box 9, Folder “Japan—Vol. III of III (1),” Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library.
10 Quoted in Mainichi Shinbunsha, ed., Iwanami Shoten to Bungei Shunjū: Sekai, Bungei Shunjū ni miru sengo shichō (Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbunsha, 1996), 323.


asiapacificresearch--2020-06-09--The COVID-19 War in Japan: Is National Face-Saving More Important than the People’s Lives?

The performance of Shinzo Abe in the war against the corona virus has been less than poor .
Abe is blamed for having put the policy priority to the Olympics and Abenomics over human life .
The Japanese people have the legendary docility and they seldom protest government policies .
But , this time , the life of each Japanese person is threatened .
Would they continue their docility and silence ?
In this paper I will do the following .
First , I will discuss the problems of Abe ’ s handling of the COVID-19 .
I argue that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ missing of the golden time and mismanagement of the whole process of fighting the virus .
Second , I will see the nature and the depth of the ordinary Japanese people ’ s dissatisfaction with Abe ’ s government ’ s handling of the corona-virus crisis .
Third , I am asking myself how much longer the ordinary Japanese people will tolerate the corruption of the right-wing establishment , risk the restoration of the pre-1945 military imperial Japan and the ruin of the national economy which Abenomics could not prevent .
From the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the infected were observed in several prefectures .
The government was aware of this trend and began to prepare anti-virus measures .
On January 30 , the government established the Novel Corona Virus Response Headquarters under the Task Force headed by the Deputy Chief Secretary of the Cabinet , Okita Yoshiki with high ranking government officials who were far from being experts in the field of infectious diseases .
On February 6 , the medical tests and consulting system was established .
On February 16 , Abe held the first meeting with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ testing were the fever of 37.5 C for four days and pronounced fatigue .
This criterion was largely criticized as being too restrictive to find out the extents of infections .
In fact , a good part of infected is not symptomatic , that is , there are no visible signs of infections .
In some studies , the asymptotic cases represent as much as 80 % of the infections .
On February 25 , Abe announced concrete anti-virus measures consisting of home quarantine and social distancing .
These measures required that those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ go the hospital for treatment and they should get the prescription through phones .
Thus , Abe ’ s government was well aware of the crisis by creating needed institutions , but the trouble was that these institutions could not do their expected functions .
The basic problem of Abe ’ s anti-virus measures may be characterized in terms of the choice of wrong policy priority , bad planning and poor coordination .
The bad choice of policy priority was shown with the arrival of the cruiser Diamond Princess on February 3 in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ disturbed much Abe ’ s government .
There were already unknown infections cumulated up in January and , now , there were 3,711 individuals on the cruiser without knowing how many were infected among the passengers and the crew .
But , 13 individuals infected were allowed to leave the ship without tests ; they were allowed to use public transportation facilities .
If these 13 individuals were infected in addition to unknown infected persons on the land who had not been quarantined , they could have transmitted the virus to a huge @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are 100 persons infected and that the multiplier of virus propagation , Ro is 2 and that the transmission period is three days .
It means that the number of infected doubles every three days .
On Day 1 , we have 100 infected ; on Day 3 , we have 200 infected ; on Day 6 , we have 400 infected ; on Day 9 , we have 800 infected ; on Day 12 , we have 1,600 infected .
Nobody knows how many persons were infected in Japan by February 3 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s arrival in Yokohama Bay .
But , one thing sure was that the government should have better managed the situation on the board of the cruiser and made suitable planning of the anti-virus war .
Speaking about the government ’ s handling of the Diamond Princess cruiser , Iwata Kentaro of Kobe University a specialist on infectious diseases was known to have evaluated the cruiser handling as “ the violation of all elementary principles of dealing with infectious diseases ” .
The fundamental question is about Abe ’ s perception of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was quoted to have said that “ the leaders ’ sense of entitlement was breeding indifference to the crisis and incompetence in dealing with the crisis ” ( 1 ) Koichi Nakano of Sophia University was quoted to have said : This was clearly shown by the nomination of Yasutoshi Nishimura , minister of economic rehabilitation , as minister of corona virus counter measures .
Abe was concerned with the salvaging what was left of his Abenomics .
The most important issue for Abe was the opening of the July Olympics , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
For Abe , the Olympics Game was a sort of saviour for him and for his government .
It could be redemption for the failure of Abenomics ; Abe was hoping to have tens of billions of billion dollars of income through Olympics related tourism ; there was huge expected income from the rights of TV diffusions .
The huge multiplier effects of employment and income deriving from the construction of facilities would have been considerable For Abe , the Olympics Game was something perhaps more important than the economic and financial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of “ saving face of Japan.
” Japan was losing face because of the three-decade economic deflation , the mishandling of the 2011 triple disasters of earthquake , tsunami and the nuclear melt-down in addition to disappointing treatment received from Trump and the “ Japan-passing ” in the North-Korean peace dialogue .
So , it was more difficult for Abe to give up the Olympics , In fact , he waited until March 24th , before he postponed it for July 2021 .
In the meantime , for more than three months from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the number of infected could have increased beyond our imagination ; nobody knows how many , but it could be several tens of thousands , may be , more than hundred thousand , given the total population of 127 million inhabitants .
In fact , there are some experts who think that the total number of the infected could be 8 times of the reported cases of infections , if the testing campaign were more aggressive .
Nevertheless , Abe waited until April 7 before he declared the state of emergency for Tokyo @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could not understand Abe ’ s way of handling the crisis .
Professor Koichi Nakano of Sophia University said this .
Thus , Abe missed the golden opportunity to save Japanese lives most likely because of his concern about his Abenomics and the interests of his corporate friends .
Abe has been criticized for the wrong timing of the closing of schools in February without proper planning and coordinating .
Abe was widely criticized for the terribly sub-standard face masks which were suspected to have been produced by incompetent company close to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ failure the most criticized was the poor testing .
As of May 3 , the number of tests in Japan was 1.3 per 1,000 people as against 12.0 for South Korea and 18.0 for the United States .
And the number of cases of infections , as of May 3 , was 15,789 to increase to 16,779 as of June 3 .
The number of death rose from 549 to 900 in the same period .
It is the generalized view that the number of cases and deaths are low , simply because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Abe tries to justify the low level of tests by evoking the poor reliability of the test kits , the lack of hospital facilities to deal with a large number of cases .
Such arguments are not very convincing , because Japan has been boasting about the high quality of the public health system .
The Voice of the Ordinary Japanese One of the sad aspects of the corona virus crisis is the Japanese people ’ s impression that Abe attaches greater importance to money and the glory of his “ New Japan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ordinary Japanese have been enduring the decades-long economic deflation , shrinking value of income , decreasing real jobs , the wide spread corruption of the establishment of the Japanese society and suffering of the elderly from hunger and social alienation .
But , now , they might have had enough ; the life of each Japanese man , women and child is threatened .
This is a new experience ; they are frightened .
They might have decided not to accept the loss of human life for Abenomics and Japan ’ s Face-Saving @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have given up their legendary docility and have decided to open up their mind ; they seem to liberate themselves from the pejorative image of “ docile sheep ” .
The following is the results of the poll conducted by Mainichi Shimbum in collaboration of a research partner on May 8 , 2020 .
Evaluation of the government and political parties Do you support the current administration in Japan led by Abe ?
Which political party do you support ?
• four other minor political parties ( below 5 % ) It is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the poll respondents support the government , only 30 % support the Liberal Demographic Party ( LDP ) led by Abe .
This seems to show that Abe is losing people ’ s support .
In the past , LDP used to have 70 % popular support .
Do you think that the declaration of state of emergency in the area you live can be lifted by the end of May ?
Do you feel uneasy about Japan ’ s medical and testing system in relation to novel corona-virus ?
How do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to novel corona virus ?
As many as 46 % of the respondents believe that the state of emergency will not be lifted , while it has been lifted .
This means that Abe has ignored the people ’ s fear .
Such fear seems to come from their mistrust in the medical and the testing system .
As a matter of fact , 68 % do not feel easy with the system .
All in all , 48 % of the respondents evaluate negatively the government response to corona virus .
Since @ @ @ @ @ @ @ did you go out of home ?
• Not at all ( 15 % ) ; • went out for essential needs such as works and shopping ( 82 % ) How much have your own direct contacts with other people declined since the declaration of the state of emergency ?
• by at least 20 % ( 26 % ) The respondents ’ responses to these questions seem to reflect that the Japanese people respect the government instruction of self quarantine and social distancing .
Since the declaration of the state of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all , while 82 % went out for essential missions .
On the other hand , as many as 80 % of the respondents say that , since the declaration of the state of emergency , the contact with other people declined by 56 % .
These poll results seem to lead to two conclusions .
First , the Japanese people are not happy with the way the government has been handling the corona-virus crisis .
Second , even if they are not satisfied with the whole system of public health and government @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have saved many lives by virtue of self quarantines , social distancing , saluting by bowing instead of shaking hands , frequent hand washing and the culture of wearing face masks .
However , nobody knows how many lives have been saved by the Japanese docility and popular culture .
It is more than certain that the real number of the infected and the corona-virus related death could be much higher than the reported figures .
There is a theory saying that the government does not report the true figures of infections and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ true data , in order not to make the people feel insecure .
But , this theory does not seem defendable , because each individual having the risk of being infected should be eager to know the truth .
Anyway , by the end of June , the true picture might emerge .
What will happen to the Japanese Culture of Docility and Harmony ?
A part of my education took place in Korea under the Japanese rule .
I used to admire the docility , the obedience to authorities , strict disciplines @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Japanese people .
On the other hand , I was sad to see that the great majority of the Japanese people had to suffer from decades-long war without much complaining ; it was difficult for me to see the Japanese families sending their fathers , sons , brothers to Kamikaze fighter planes .
I was wondering for whom the war was ?
I was wondering who was benefitting from the war ?
Was it for the people or for the glory of a few ambitious political and military leaders who had the illusion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ liberating Asia from the White ” ?
Even now , I see , in front of my eyes , the poor Japanese children and the elders starving to death on the street of Tokyo and other Japanese cities in 1944 and 1945 .
The Japanese people thought , since the Hiroshima and the Nagasaki , that they would enjoy peace , prosperity , the end of Kempeitai ( cruel military police ) and ordinary people-friendly government .
In short , they were hoping a decent and human society in which even the ordinary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Japanese people have been denied of such world .
History tells us that , if a single political force rules the country for very long period , the probability of corruption of the political establishment , the abuse of power and the alienation of the week increases .
This has happened in Japan .
One of the amazing political scenes in Japan is the one in which one political party , the Liberal Democratic Party ( LDP ) ruled , since 1957 , 57 years out of 63 years , or 91 % @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Japan had 21 prime ministers .
The longevity of Japanese prime ministers has been as follows : 1-year PMs : 4 ; 2-year PMs : 11 ; 3-year PMs : 2 ; 5-year PMs : 2 ; 8-year PM:1 ; 10-year PM:1 Shinzo Abe has been prime minister for 10 years ( 2006-2007 and 2012-2020 ) .
Yasuhiro Nakasone ( 1982-1987 ) and Junichiro Koizumi ( 2001-2006 ) were two 5-year prime ministers .
Abe ’ s maternal grandfather , Nobuske Kishi ( 1957-60 ) and Hayato Ikeda ( 1961-64 ) were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the Japanese government is well reflected by the fact that 71.4 % of prime ministers since 1957 were 1-year or 2-year prime ministers .
The excessive instability of the Japanese government was attributable partly to the different term for the party presidency ( 3 years for LDP ) and the term of prime minister ( 4 years ) .
The prime minister is the president of the party in power ; this can create confusion .
However , the more important reason for the instability could be the never ending corruption of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many of them killed themselves or lost the position of prime minister because of corruption .
One of the notorious scandals was the Recruit Scandal in which 70 lawmakers bought , in 1988 , the stock of a company before its listing and made fortune .
There were savage sex offenses at night clubs by lawmakers of the LDP .
The bribery scandals of construction industry has been a part of the corruption culture of the establishment .
The land dealing scandal in which the first lady was involved was related to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ portion of the land ’ s market price ; the land was for the establishment of a Meiji-era inspired ultra-right primary school , Moritomo Gakuen .
The scandal which made the Japanese the very angry was the scandal of prolonging the tenure of the Tokyo chief prosecutor , Hiromu Kurokawa , from 63 years to 65 years .
The chief prosecutor is a strong supporter of Abe , who needed the prosecutor in order to use the Bureau of Prosecutor for Abe ’ s political purpose including the silencing of the voice of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ first time , 4 million twitters of the ordinary Japanese people emerged to protest Abe ’ s hidden intention .
It happened that Kurokawa played , for money , the illegal “ mahjong ” game and he resigned .
There is a close correlation between the length of power and the extent of the corruption culture .
As we saw , out of 63 years since 1957 , the year of the creation of LDP by Abe ’ s grandfather , it ruled Japan for 57 years , that is , 91 % @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of power leads necessarily to the creation of the corruption culture dominated by big business , bureaucrats and politicians .
This group begins with money-power collusion , then the creation of the oligarchy and eventually the creation of corruption culture .
Once you come to the era of the corruption culture , it is very difficult to get rid of it .
We have seen it in South Korea under the 58-year rule by the conservative governments since 1948 , that is , 81 % of the period , 1948-2020 .
The most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this .
The core of the culture is the monetary-political establishment whose interest is the maximization of the interests of the establishment at the expense of those of the ordinary people .
The nomination and the expulsion of prime ministers are most likely determined by the establishment .
Many of the short-term prime ministers are those who might have done something which he establishment did not like .
Under this situation , the economic prosperity has not been very beneficial to the ordinary Japanese .
One of the popular descriptions of Japan since @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rich but , the ordinary people are poor.
” There is another political phenomenon which makes the Japanese people worried and insecure ; it is the Abe group ’ s dream of restoring the pre-1945 military imperial empire of Japan .
Abe ’ s decades-long ambition has been the amendment of the Peace Constitution , in particular , Article 9 , which prevents Japan from making offensive wars .
His group proposes even the way Hitler changed the Weimer Constitution by force .
The statement of the deputy prime minister who was also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how much the Abe team admired the Nazi constitution .
“ German ’ s Weimer constitution was changed into Nazi constitution before anyone knew .
It was changed before anyone else notices .
Why don ’ t we learn from that method ?
” ( 4 ) There was also the State Secret Act adopted in 2013 designed to silence the voices of objection .
This Act has the following characteristics .
• Civil servant who leaks state secrets can be imprisoned up to 10 years .
• Civilians and journalists who reveal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 5 years .
• It is the government which defines what should be state secrets To restore the old Japanese empire , Abe has to silence the voice of objection .
Abe has made the NHK ( Japan ’ s national TV ) into “ Ave TV.
” The Japanese people have endured all these realities ; they have suffered from 3-decade long economic deflation ; they have had to watch helplessly how Abenomics could not find the solution .
As a matter of fact , Abenomcs has failed .
The fiscal arrow @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wrong targets .
The fiscal arrow has increased the national debt to 253 % of GDP .
The monetary arrow had inundated cash , in the name of QE ( quantity easing ) , in the financial institutions without really connecting the money to the real economy , the good-producing economy .
The real arrow was the third arrow of structural adjustment .
This policy means the strengthening of the industries by not bailing out the hopeless big companies .
Most of the monetary and fiscal resources have been used for the bailout @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Japanese people have endured all these hardship caused by wrong policies .
Yet , they have not gone down to the streets to protest .
They did once for the antiwar movement in 1969 .
In 2011 , more than 300 civic organizations made street demonstration against the government mishandling of the triple disasters of earthquake , tsunami and nuclear meld-down .
But , they could not continue , because of the lack of sustained backing of political forces .
However , Abe ’ s choice of the glory of New Japan ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ expense of simple happiness of simple people might lead to the open protests against Abe ’ s political forces .
The simple happiness of simple Japanese is peace , more equal distribution of the fruits of economic development and a little better social status recognized and respected by the elite group .
To do this , they need strong opposition parties .
But , there are too many small political parties and the Abe ’ s LDP is too strong and still popular .
However , if united , the ordinary Japanese people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : please click the share buttons above or below .
Forward this article to your email lists .
Crosspost on your blog site , internet forums .
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Professor Joseph H. Chung is professor of Economics and co-director of the Observatoire de l ’ Asie de l ’ Est ( OAE ) of the Centre d ’ Études sur l ’ Intégration et la Mondialisation ( CEIM ) , Université du Québec à Montréal ( UQAM ) .
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization ( CRG @ @

The performance of Shinzo Abe in the war against the corona virus has been less than poor.
Abe is blamed for having put the policy priority to the Olympics and Abenomics over human life.
The Japanese people have the legendary docility and they seldom protest government policies.
But, this time, the life of each Japanese person is threatened. Would they continue their docility and silence?
In this paper I will do the following.
First, I will discuss the problems of Abe’s handling of the COVID-19. I argue that Abe made two errors, namely the missing of the golden time and mismanagement of the whole process of fighting the virus.
Second, I will see the nature and the depth of the ordinary Japanese people’s dissatisfaction with Abe’s government’s handling of the corona-virus crisis.
Third, I am asking myself how much longer the ordinary Japanese people will tolerate the corruption of the right-wing establishment, risk the restoration of the pre-1945 military imperial Japan and the ruin of the national economy which Abenomics could not prevent.
The COVID-19 Crisis and Abe’s Policy Failure
From the mid January 2020, the cases of the infected were observed in several prefectures. The government was aware of this trend and began to prepare anti-virus measures.
On January 30, the government established the Novel Corona Virus Response Headquarters under the Task Force headed by the Deputy Chief Secretary of the Cabinet, Okita Yoshiki with high ranking government officials who were far from being experts in the field of infectious diseases.
On February 6, the medical tests and consulting system was established. On February 16, Abe held the first meeting with the experts.
And, the criteria of testing were the fever of 37.5 C for four days and pronounced fatigue. This criterion was largely criticized as being too restrictive to find out the extents of infections.
In fact, a good part of infected is not symptomatic, that is, there are no visible signs of infections. In some studies, the asymptotic cases represent as much as 80% of the infections.
On February 25, Abe announced concrete anti-virus measures consisting of home quarantine and social distancing. These measures required that those who were of high risk should not go the hospital for treatment and they should get the prescription through phones.
Thus, Abe’s government was well aware of the crisis by creating needed institutions, but the trouble was that these institutions could not do their expected functions.
The basic problem of Abe’s anti-virus measures may be characterized in terms of the choice of wrong policy priority, bad planning and poor coordination.
The bad choice of policy priority was shown with the arrival of the cruiser Diamond Princess on February 3 in Yokohama Bay. This seems to have disturbed much Abe’s government.
There were already unknown infections cumulated up in January and, now, there were 3,711 individuals on the cruiser without knowing how many were infected among the passengers and the crew.
But, 13 individuals infected were allowed to leave the ship without tests; they were allowed to use public transportation facilities. If these 13 individuals were infected in addition to unknown infected persons on the land who had not been quarantined, they could have transmitted the virus to a huge number of individuals.
Suppose that there are 100 persons infected and that the multiplier of virus propagation, Ro is 2 and that the transmission period is three days. It means that the number of infected doubles every three days.
On Day 1, we have 100 infected; on Day 3, we have 200 infected; on Day 6, we have 400 infected; on Day 9, we have 800 infected; on Day 12, we have 1,600 infected. Nobody knows how many persons were infected in Japan by February 3, the day of the cruiser’s arrival in Yokohama Bay.
But, one thing sure was that the government should have better managed the situation on the board of the cruiser and made suitable planning of the anti-virus war.
Speaking about the government’s handling of the Diamond Princess cruiser, Iwata Kentaro of Kobe University a specialist on infectious diseases was known to have evaluated the cruiser handling as “the violation of all elementary principles of dealing with infectious diseases”.
The fundamental question is about Abe’s perception of the corona virus crisis. Professor Iwata Kentaro was quoted to have said that “the leaders’ sense of entitlement was breeding indifference to the crisis and incompetence in dealing with the crisis” (1)
Koichi Nakano of Sophia University was quoted to have said:
“The Abe government has approached this crisis first as and foremost economic crisis and government public relation crisis rather than an epidemiological crisis.” (2)
This was clearly shown by the nomination of Yasutoshi Nishimura, minister of economic rehabilitation, as minister of corona virus counter measures. Abe was concerned with the salvaging what was left of his Abenomics.
The most important issue for Abe was the opening of the July Olympics, which was threatened by the corona virus crisis.
For Abe, the Olympics Game was a sort of saviour for him and for his government. It could be redemption for the failure of Abenomics; Abe was hoping to have tens of billions of billion dollars of income through Olympics related tourism; there was huge expected income from the rights of TV diffusions. The huge multiplier effects of employment and income deriving from the construction of facilities would have been considerable
For Abe, the Olympics Game was something perhaps more important than the economic and financial bonanza; it was also the question of “saving face of Japan.”
Japan was losing face because of the three-decade economic deflation, the mishandling of the 2011 triple disasters of earthquake, tsunami and the nuclear melt-down in addition to disappointing treatment received from Trump and the “Japan-passing” in the North-Korean peace dialogue.
So, it was more difficult for Abe to give up the Olympics, In fact, he waited until March 24th, before he postponed it for July 2021.
In the meantime, for more than three months from January to mid March had passed and the number of infected could have increased beyond our imagination; nobody knows how many, but it could be several tens of thousands, may be, more than hundred thousand, given the total population of 127 million inhabitants.
In fact, there are some experts who think that the total number of the infected could be 8 times of the reported cases of infections, if the testing campaign were more aggressive.
Nevertheless, Abe waited until April 7 before he declared the state of emergency for Tokyo and six surrounding prefectures. The world could not understand Abe’s way of handling the crisis.
Professor Koichi Nakano of Sophia University said this.
“Abe seemed generally reluctant to call the state of emergency, so may be out of fear of further damaging the economy, he dragged his feet too long, but he had no choice but to accept the outbreak which is now out of control.” (3)
Thus, Abe missed the golden opportunity to save Japanese lives most likely because of his concern about his Abenomics and the interests of his corporate friends.
Abe has been criticized for the wrong timing of the closing of schools in February without proper planning and coordinating.
Abe was widely criticized for the terribly sub-standard face masks which were suspected to have been produced by incompetent company close to the establishment.
But, Abe’s failure the most criticized was the poor testing. As of May 3, the number of tests in Japan was 1.3 per 1,000 people as against 12.0 for South Korea and 18.0 for the United States.
And the number of cases of infections, as of May 3, was 15,789 to increase to 16,779 as of June 3. The number of death rose from 549 to 900 in the same period.
It is the generalized view that the number of cases and deaths are low, simply because the number of tests is low. Abe tries to justify the low level of tests by evoking the poor reliability of the test kits, the lack of hospital facilities to deal with a large number of cases.
Such arguments are not very convincing, because Japan has been boasting about the high quality of the public health system.
The Voice of the Ordinary Japanese
One of the sad aspects of the corona virus crisis is the Japanese people’s impression that Abe attaches greater importance to money and the glory of his “New Japan” than to human life.
The ordinary Japanese have been enduring the decades-long economic deflation, shrinking value of income, decreasing real jobs, the wide spread corruption of the establishment of the Japanese society and suffering of the elderly from hunger and social alienation.
But, now, they might have had enough; the life of each Japanese man, women and child is threatened. This is a new experience; they are frightened. They might have decided not to accept the loss of human life for Abenomics and Japan’s Face-Saving.
In fact, they seem to have given up their legendary docility and have decided to open up their mind; they seem to liberate themselves from the pejorative image of “docile sheep”.
The following is the results of the poll conducted by Mainichi Shimbum in collaboration of a research partner on May 8, 2020.
Evaluation of the government and political parties
Do you support the current administration in Japan led by Abe?
No (45%);
Yes (40%)
Which political party do you support?
LDP (30%),
the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDPJ) (9%),
Nippon Innovation Party (11%),
four other minor political parties (below 5 %)
It is interesting to notice that while 40% of the poll respondents support the government, only 30% support the Liberal Demographic Party (LDP) led by Abe. This seems to show that Abe is losing people’s support. In the past, LDP used to have 70% popular support.
Evaluation of the COVID-19 policies
Do you think that the declaration of state of emergency in the area you live can be lifted by the end of May?
No (46%),
Yes (36%)
Do you feel uneasy about Japan’s medical and testing system in relation to novel corona-virus?
Yes (68%);
Not uneasy (14%)
How do you evaluate the administration’s response to novel corona virus?
Negatively (48%);
Positively (22%)
As many as 46% of the respondents believe that the state of emergency will not be lifted, while it has been lifted.
This means that Abe has ignored the people’s fear. Such fear seems to come from their mistrust in the medical and the testing system. As a matter of fact, 68% do not feel easy with the system. All in all, 48% of the respondents evaluate negatively the government response to corona virus.
Japanese people’s docility
Since the declaration of the state of emergency did you go out of home?
Not at all (15%);
went out for essential needs such as works and shopping (82%)
How much have your own direct contacts with other people declined since the declaration of the state of emergency?
Declined by 80% (56%);
by at least 20% (26%)
The respondents’ responses to these questions seem to reflect that the Japanese people respect the government instruction of self quarantine and social distancing.
Since the declaration of the state of emergency 15% did not go out all, while 82% went out for essential missions.
On the other hand, as many as 80% of the respondents say that, since the declaration of the state of emergency, the contact with other people declined by 56%.
These poll results seem to lead to two conclusions. First, the Japanese people are not happy with the way the government has been handling the corona-virus crisis.
Second, even if they are not satisfied with the whole system of public health and government reactive policies, the Japanese people could have saved many lives by virtue of self quarantines, social distancing, saluting by bowing instead of shaking hands, frequent hand washing and the culture of wearing face masks.
However, nobody knows how many lives have been saved by the Japanese docility and popular culture. It is more than certain that the real number of the infected and the corona-virus related death could be much higher than the reported figures.
There is a theory saying that the government does not report the true figures of infections and deaths, even if it has the true data, in order not to make the people feel insecure.
But, this theory does not seem defendable, because each individual having the risk of being infected should be eager to know the truth. Anyway, by the end of June, the true picture might emerge.
What will happen to the Japanese Culture of Docility and Harmony?
A part of my education took place in Korea under the Japanese rule. I used to admire the docility, the obedience to authorities, strict disciplines and the quest for harmony of the Japanese people.
On the other hand, I was sad to see that the great majority of the Japanese people had to suffer from decades-long war without much complaining; it was difficult for me to see the Japanese families sending their fathers, sons, brothers to Kamikaze fighter planes.
I was wondering for whom the war was? I was wondering who was benefitting from the war?
Was it for the people or for the glory of a few ambitious political and military leaders who had the illusion of conducting the “holy war of liberating Asia from the White”?
Even now, I see, in front of my eyes, the poor Japanese children and the elders starving to death on the street of Tokyo and other Japanese cities in 1944 and 1945.
The Japanese people thought, since the Hiroshima and the Nagasaki, that they would enjoy peace, prosperity, the end of Kempeitai (cruel military police) and ordinary people-friendly government.
In short, they were hoping a decent and human society in which even the ordinary people can enjoy. But the ordinary Japanese people have been denied of such world.
History tells us that, if a single political force rules the country for very long period, the probability of corruption of the political establishment, the abuse of power and the alienation of the week increases. This has happened in Japan.
One of the amazing political scenes in Japan is the one in which one political party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) ruled, since 1957, 57 years out of 63 years, or 91% of the period.
During this period, Japan had 21 prime ministers. The longevity of Japanese prime ministers has been as follows: 1-year PMs: 4; 2-year PMs: 11; 3-year PMs: 2; 5-year PMs: 2; 8-year PM:1; 10-year PM:1
Shinzo Abe has been prime minister for 10 years (2006-2007 and 2012-2020).
Yasuhiro Nakasone (1982-1987) and Junichiro Koizumi (2001-2006) were two 5-year prime ministers.
Abe’s maternal grandfather, Nobuske Kishi (1957-60) and Hayato Ikeda (1961-64) were two 3-year prime ministers.
The instability of the Japanese government is well reflected by the fact that 71.4 % of prime ministers since 1957 were 1-year or 2-year prime ministers.
The excessive instability of the Japanese government was attributable partly to the different term for the party presidency (3 years for LDP) and the term of prime minister (4 years). The prime minister is the president of the party in power; this can create confusion.
However, the more important reason for the instability could be the never ending corruption of the political leaders. In fact, many of them killed themselves or lost the position of prime minister because of corruption.
One of the notorious scandals was the Recruit Scandal in which 70 lawmakers bought, in 1988, the stock of a company before its listing and made fortune. There were savage sex offenses at night clubs by lawmakers of the LDP. The bribery scandals of construction industry has been a part of the corruption culture of the establishment.
The land dealing scandal in which the first lady was involved was related to the acquisition of public land for a small portion of the land’s market price; the land was for the establishment of a Meiji-era inspired ultra-right primary school, Moritomo Gakuen.
The scandal which made the Japanese the very angry was the scandal of prolonging the tenure of the Tokyo chief prosecutor, Hiromu Kurokawa, from 63 years to 65 years.
The chief prosecutor is a strong supporter of Abe, who needed the prosecutor in order to use the Bureau of Prosecutor for Abe’s political purpose including the silencing of the voice of objections to his ambitions.
For the first time, 4 million twitters of the ordinary Japanese people emerged to protest Abe’s hidden intention. It happened that Kurokawa played, for money, the illegal “mahjong” game and he resigned.
There is a close correlation between the length of power and the extent of the corruption culture. As we saw, out of 63 years since 1957, the year of the creation of LDP by Abe’s grandfather, it ruled Japan for 57 years, that is, 91% of the period.
Such long period of power leads necessarily to the creation of the corruption culture dominated by big business, bureaucrats and politicians. This group begins with money-power collusion, then the creation of the oligarchy and eventually the creation of corruption culture.
Once you come to the era of the corruption culture, it is very difficult to get rid of it. We have seen it in South Korea under the 58-year rule by the conservative governments since 1948, that is, 81% of the period, 1948-2020.
The most disastrous effect of the corruption culture is this. The core of the culture is the monetary-political establishment whose interest is the maximization of the interests of the establishment at the expense of those of the ordinary people.
The nomination and the expulsion of prime ministers are most likely determined by the establishment. Many of the short-term prime ministers are those who might have done something which he establishment did not like.
Under this situation, the economic prosperity has not been very beneficial to the ordinary Japanese. One of the popular descriptions of Japan since the 1980s was “the country is rich but, the ordinary people are poor.”
There is another political phenomenon which makes the Japanese people worried and insecure; it is the Abe group’s dream of restoring the pre-1945 military imperial empire of Japan.
Abe’s decades-long ambition has been the amendment of the Peace Constitution, in particular, Article 9, which prevents Japan from making offensive wars. His group proposes even the way Hitler changed the Weimer Constitution by force.
The statement of the deputy prime minister who was also foreign minister, Taro Aso, showed how much the Abe team admired the Nazi constitution.
“German’s Weimer constitution was changed into Nazi constitution before anyone knew. It was changed before anyone else notices. Why don’t we learn from that method?” (4)
There was also the State Secret Act adopted in 2013 designed to silence the voices of objection. This Act has the following characteristics.
Civil servant who leaks state secrets can be imprisoned up to 10 years.
Civilians and journalists who reveal state secrets may be imprisoned up to 5 years.
It is the government which defines what should be state secrets
To restore the old Japanese empire, Abe has to silence the voice of objection. Abe has made the NHK (Japan’s national TV) into “Ave TV.”
The Japanese people have endured all these realities; they have suffered from 3-decade long economic deflation; they have had to watch helplessly how Abenomics could not find the solution.
As a matter of fact, Abenomcs has failed. The fiscal arrow and the monetary arrow have hit the wrong targets. The fiscal arrow has increased the national debt to 253% of GDP. The monetary arrow had inundated cash, in the name of QE (quantity easing), in the financial institutions without really connecting the money to the real economy, the good-producing economy.
The real arrow was the third arrow of structural adjustment. This policy means the strengthening of the industries by not bailing out the hopeless big companies. Most of the monetary and fiscal resources have been used for the bailout of businesses close to LDP.
The Japanese people have endured all these hardship caused by wrong policies. Yet, they have not gone down to the streets to protest.
They did once for the antiwar movement in 1969. In 2011, more than 300 civic organizations made street demonstration against the government mishandling of the triple disasters of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meld-down.
But, they could not continue, because of the lack of sustained backing of political forces.
However, Abe’s choice of the glory of New Japan (neo-military and imperial Japan) at the expense of simple happiness of simple people might lead to the open protests against Abe’s political forces.
The simple happiness of simple Japanese is peace, more equal distribution of the fruits of economic development and a little better social status recognized and respected by the elite group.
To do this, they need strong opposition parties. But, there are too many small political parties and the Abe’s LDP is too strong and still popular.
However, if united, the ordinary Japanese people can change things.
*
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Professor Joseph H. Chung is professor of Economics and co-director of the Observatoire de l’Asie de l’Est (OAE) of the Centre d’Études sur l’Intégration et la Mondialisation (CEIM), Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Notes
(1) thedailybeast.com/japans-covid-19-state-of-emergency-locks-down-criticism
(2) Ibid
(3) theguardian.cm/world/2920/apeil/09/dash-loom-in-japan-as-tokyo-governor-says-abe-covid-mesures-not-enough)
(4) thedeadlybeast.com/japan-shinzo-abe-government-has-a-thing-about-hitler-it likes-him


asiapacificresearch--2020-06-11--The Afghan-Pakistani Rapprochement Complicates India’s Hybrid War Plans

Pakistani Chief Of Army Staff ( COAS ) Bajwa visited the Afghan capital of Kabul earlier this week for talks with the country ’ s leadership as part of his country ’ s efforts to facilitate the ongoing peace process in the neighboring state , with the resultant rapprochement between both sides being a welcome development that also complicates India ’ s Hybrid War plans to exploit the landlocked country as a terrorist-spewing proxy against its rival .
A surprise development took place earlier this week after Pakistani Chief Of Army Staff ( COAS ) Bajwa visited the Afghan capital @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as part of his country ’ s efforts to facilitate the ongoing peace process in the neighboring state .
Pakistan ’ s Inter-Services Public Relations ( ISPR ) media wing of its armed forces published a press release about their meeting , but it should also be added that it was about much more than just the concise summary that they shared .
Pakistan believes that Kabul ’ s reluctance to release the 5,000 Taliban prisoners that was previously agreed to is dangerously threatening the nascent peace process , hence why COAS Bajma @ @ @ @ @ @ @ complying with this clause to his hosts .
He would have also assured them of his country ’ s assistance in supporting a peaceful political solution to the long-running conflict in coordination with all of the neighboring stakeholders .
After all , Pakistan is the obvious solution to Afghanistan ’ s economic problems , but bilateral trade can only surge upon the stabilization of their border .
Once that ’ s achieved , and the prerogative rests with Kabul for doing so after Islamabad already fulfilled its responsibilities in this respect , then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can have an early and honorable return to their homeland .
Afterwards , people-to-people ties can flourish and more meaningful COVID aid can be disbursed .
What ’ s important to take note of amidst all of this is that India ’ s Hybrid War plans to exploit Afghanistan as a terrorist-spewing proxy against Pakistan have become more complicated following the nascent Afghan-Pakistani rapprochement of the past week .
That development reduces , but crucially doesn ’ t completely eliminate , India ’ s ability to continue waging its campaign of terror against @ @ @ @ @ @ @ policymakers regard as providing them with so-called “ strategic depth ” .
This couldn ’ t have been possible without the US ’ support , strongly suggesting that it ’ s decided to limit its Indian ally ’ s involvement in Afghanistan for the sake of protecting its strategic relations with Pakistan in pursuit of their much more closely aligned goals in that third country .
So as to better understand the motivation behind the US encouraging its Afghan political proxies to reciprocate Pakistan ’ s peacemaking outreach to the point of their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ simplified breakdown of all three main players ’ interests in that country : • None Exploit refugees as “ Weapons of Mass Migration ” against Pakistan • None “ Contain/Isolate ” Pakistan from the rest of the region • None Use India to economically “ contain ” China in the region through the Chabahar Corridor • None Rely on Pakistan to diplomatically assist the Afghan peace process The US ’ goals in relation to India are the first and fourth ones whereas those of pertinence to Pakistan are the second and the third @ @ @ @ @ @ @ proxies to enter into their current rapprochement with Pakistan , it can be concluded that its grand strategic goals in the contemporary context are best advanced by aligning closer with Pakistan ’ s than India ’ s .
This insight reveals that India ’ s US-backed role in Afghanistan might soon diminish since America wouldn ’ t need India in this respect to economically “ contain ” China through Chabahar if it actively invests in N-CPEC+ with this intention ( even if that said intention isn ’ t shared by Pakistan which might @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an apolitical investment ) .
Nor , for that matter , would the US actively support Indian-backed terrorist groups there since they could endanger the safety of any of the its forthcoming N-CPEC+ investments in Pakistan .
Looking forward , Pakistan proverbially won a strategic battle with India in Afghanistan but has yet to win the war there since New Delhi ’ s pernicious influence is still pervasive .
Nevertheless , the credible presumption that the US supports the Afghan-Pakistani rapprochement gives rise to cautious optimism that India ’ s new patron is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to its proxy there upon recalibrating its regional strategy in order to accommodate it to new realities .
Note to readers : please click the share buttons above or below .
Forward this article to your email lists .
Crosspost on your blog site , internet forums .
etc .
This article was originally published on OneWorld .
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia , China ’ s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contributor to Global Research .

Pakistani Chief Of Army Staff (COAS) Bajwa visited the Afghan capital of Kabul earlier this week for talks with the country’s leadership as part of his country’s efforts to facilitate the ongoing peace process in the neighboring state, with the resultant rapprochement between both sides being a welcome development that also complicates India’s Hybrid War plans to exploit the landlocked country as a terrorist-spewing proxy against its rival.
A surprise development took place earlier this week after Pakistani Chief Of Army Staff (COAS) Bajwa visited the Afghan capital of Kabul for talks with its leadership as part of his country’s efforts to facilitate the ongoing peace process in the neighboring state. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) media wing of its armed forces published a press release about their meeting, but it should also be added that it was about much more than just the concise summary that they shared.
Pakistan believes that Kabul’s reluctance to release the 5,000 Taliban prisoners that was previously agreed to is dangerously threatening the nascent peace process, hence why COAS Bajma must have presumably emphasized the necessity of complying with this clause to his hosts. He would have also assured them of his country’s assistance in supporting a peaceful political solution to the long-running conflict in coordination with all of the neighboring stakeholders. After all, Pakistan is the obvious solution to Afghanistan’s economic problems, but bilateral trade can only surge upon the stabilization of their border. Once that’s achieved, and the prerogative rests with Kabul for doing so after Islamabad already fulfilled its responsibilities in this respect, then the several million Afghan refugees in Pakistan can have an early and honorable return to their homeland. Afterwards, people-to-people ties can flourish and more meaningful COVID aid can be disbursed.
What’s important to take note of amidst all of this is that India’s Hybrid War plans to exploit Afghanistan as a terrorist-spewing proxy against Pakistan have become more complicated following the nascent Afghan-Pakistani rapprochement of the past week. That development reduces, but crucially doesn’t completely eliminate, India’s ability to continue waging its campaign of terror against Pakistan from the landlocked country that its policymakers regard as providing them with so-called “strategic depth”.
This couldn’t have been possible without the US’ support, strongly suggesting that it’s decided to limit its Indian ally’s involvement in Afghanistan for the sake of protecting its strategic relations with Pakistan in pursuit of their much more closely aligned goals in that third country. So as to better understand the motivation behind the US encouraging its Afghan political proxies to reciprocate Pakistan’s peacemaking outreach to the point of their current rapprochement, here’s a simplified breakdown of all three main players’ interests in that country:
Pakistan
Peace
Repatriation of refugees
Promote regional connectivity as the global pivot state
Counter-Terrorism
India
Indefinite warfare
Exploit refugees as “ Weapons of Mass Migration ” against Pakistan
“Contain/Isolate” Pakistan from the rest of the region
Controlled chaos against Pakistan via Afghan-based terrorist proxies
US
Use India to economically “contain” China in the region through the Chabahar Corridor
Rely on Pakistan to diplomatically assist the Afghan peace process
Achieve reliable post-war economic access to Central Asia ( N-CPEC+
Selectively employ terrorist proxies for strategic ends
The US’ goals in relation to India are the first and fourth ones whereas those of pertinence to Pakistan are the second and the third. Considering that America allowed its Afghan proxies to enter into their current rapprochement with Pakistan, it can be concluded that its grand strategic goals in the contemporary context are best advanced by aligning closer with Pakistan’s than India’s.
This insight reveals that India’s US-backed role in Afghanistan might soon diminish since America wouldn’t need India in this respect to economically “contain” China through Chabahar if it actively invests in N-CPEC+ with this intention (even if that said intention isn’t shared by Pakistan which might only regard the US’ role as an apolitical investment). Nor, for that matter, would the US actively support Indian-backed terrorist groups there since they could endanger the safety of any of the its forthcoming N-CPEC+ investments in Pakistan.
Looking forward, Pakistan proverbially won a strategic battle with India in Afghanistan but has yet to win the war there since New Delhi’s pernicious influence is still pervasive. Nevertheless, the credible presumption that the US supports the Afghan-Pakistani rapprochement gives rise to cautious optimism that India’s new patron is reconsidering the wisdom of its prior assistance to its proxy there upon recalibrating its regional strategy in order to accommodate it to new realities.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image is from OneWorld