An opinion poll conducted by Mainichi Shimbun almost immediately after the voting showed approximately the same results (57% “in favor” and 33% “against”), as it received roughly two months earlier, when the reaction to the new laws upon their approval by the House of Representatives (lower house) was tested.
Meanwhile, the number of respondents supporting Shinzo Abe government dropped by 3% to compare to August and amounted to 35% in September, while the number of respondents opposing his politics reached 50% (a 1% increase to compare to the previous month).
It is vital, however, to indicate the main motive of negative attitude toward the results of the parliamentary vote approving the raft of new defense laws.
Opinion polls, conducted by a number of mass media at the beginning of the third decade of September to “feel the pulse” of the Japanese society, showed that 70-80% of Japanese were unhappy with the government’s inability to substantiate the content of the laws and the urgency with which they were passed. If to judge by this statistics, not only opposition, but also some supporters of the ruling party are among the dissatisfied.
This outlook of the public opinion coincides with the stance of experts, who assess the passing of the new defense laws as an action that “left bitter aftertaste in the mouth in the dose, exceeding the usual.”
This “aftertaste” was left behind mainly by the missed opportunities of an “in depth debate” on the resent drastic changes in the realm of national security that could have been held between the public and the deputies. The main issues related to the national security are uncertainty and challenges stemming, first of all, from the recent rise of China and, secondly, from possible changes in the foreign policy of the US, Japan’s key military and political ally.
Residents of Okinawa were among those, who had the harshest negative reaction to the passing of the new defense legislation. Here, the discontent resulted in the aggravation of the issue concerning the transfer of the Futenma American air base, located in the center of densely populated Ginowan.
It should be noted in this connection that then Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto and the US ambassador in Japan Walter F. Mondale made an agreement to relocate the military base to another less populated area of the Okinawa island. The procedure of the relocation was supposed to be completed in the subsequent 5-7 years. Yet, the base is still in Ginowan because the conclusion of the said agreement resulted in a widespread movement for its total removal from the prefecture. In the course of almost two decades, the issue with the relocation of Futenma has been remaining a perpetual sore in the relations of these two closest allies.
At the end of 2013, PM Abe managed to finally persuade then governor of Okinawa Hirokazu Nakaima to allocate a plot of land for the dislocation of the base in the not so densely populated area of Henoko. But he paid for that with his governor seat, losing in the 2014 gubernatorial election to Takeshi Onaga, a firm opponent of any compromises with the central government on this matter. The discussions concerning the new raft of defense laws, which opened in the Lower House of the Parliament last summer only reinforced the Okinawan governor’s stance that not only Futenma, but all other US and Japan military bases must be removed from the island.
The speech of Mr. Onaga on September 14, 2015 in Geneva at the regular session of the UN Commission on Human Rights, where he mentioned the topic of Futenma’s relocation, was regarded in Japan as a proof of a “growing gap” between the positions of the American military command in Japan and the country’s central government, on the one hand, and the government of Okinawa, on the other. In his emotional speech, the governor of Okinawa described “a bayonet covered theft” of a part of the island’s territory in the Henoko area, which could be used by the local population for economic purposes.
Commenting on this speech, Yoshihide Suga, Chief Cabinet Secretary, stated that 1996 intergovernmenta
These unprecedented internationally observed public standoff between the statesmen of the same country occurred after a series of confidential talks between them, which took place at the end of August, beginning of September 2015, and which, as it seems, did not prove to be effective. In the context of the current situation, further actions of the central government of Japan on the implementation of one of the major agreements with its key ally can be defined as unpredictable.
But let us once again focus on the significance of the passing of the new defense legislation resulted from a long process of gradual breakaway from the letter and the spirit of Art 9 of the national Constitution.
Today’s discussions concerning the consequences of this event (and nobody doubts its significance) set the highest premium on the creation of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) in 1954. And it is pointed out that in June of 1946, when a new parliament of Japan debated the draft of the postwar Constitution, then PM Shigeru Yoshida emphasized that Art 9 of the Constitution would prohibit Japan from engaging even in defensive wars. At the time of creation of the JSDF, Shigeru Yoshida was reminded of his own words he had said eight years earlier, to which he responded with a famous oxymoron that the country’s defense body would not possess war-making power.
Today, when the JSDF are de facto one of the most powerful military forces (despite relatively low defense costs), one of the two substantive provisions of still effective Art 9 of the national Constitution (“…the Japanese people…will never maintain land, sea, and air forces…”) sounds like some bizarre joke.
It does not imply, however, that the mentioned article de facto lost its significance in the real-life Japanese international politics. Just on the contrary, it undoubtedly maintains its role of a “restraining force” affecting Japan’s international politics by virtue of another key provision “… the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.”
And this is why a complete eradication of this article from the national Constitution is seen as the key objective of Shinzo Abe’s political career.
Though, now, with the passing of the new defense laws, the prospects for the achievement of this objective seem to be even more unrealistic. And the results of recent public opinion polls suggest just that.
Vladimir Terekhov, expert on the Asia-Pacific region, specially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
