Japan may have regained its sovereignty in 1952, but the decision to dispatch Japanese troops to Iraq earlier this month has reminded many of its citizens just how little independence the country really has -- and just how much control the United States retains.
If British Prime Minister Tony Blair is President Bush's poodle, then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is his cocker spaniel.
"We are still occupied by the American military," said an acquaintance of mine who is a former official of Japan's Ministry of Education and now a university president. "We are a satellite. Our foreign policy revolves entirely around the wishes of Washington."
Like many other Japanese, he believes that Koizumi ordered Japan's first military sortie into an active combat zone since World War II because he was too weak to stand up to President Bush.
According to a recent Japan Broadcasting Corp. poll, 51% of the country opposes getting involved in Washington's war against Iraq, while only 42% supports Koizumi's decision. What's more, 82% of those polled said they did not trust the prime minister's explanations for marching into the Iraqi quagmire. Most believe that Koizumi had to go along with Bush or risk damaging the alliance with the U.S.
There's no question that the U.S. takes Japan for granted. The Bush administration likes to boast about how successful the U.S. Army was in democratizing Japan after World War II, and it likes to suggest that it will accomplish the same feat in Iraq. But it fails to note that the U.S. military kept the Japanese prefecture of Okinawa as a Pentagon colony for more than 25 years -- until 1972 -- and that the U.S. still has 38 military bases on that small island.
Okinawa is home to 1.3 million Japanese citizens who since 1945 have repeatedly had to bear the burdens of violent crimes by American soldiers, continuous environmental and noise pollution, hit-and-run accidents, bar brawls and behavior that would never be tolerated in the U.S. or the mainland of Japan.
The Washington official charged with keeping Japan in the U.S. orbit is Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. His name probably appears in the Japanese press more frequently than any other U.S. government figure. Armitage has been hammering Koizumi for more than a year "not to miss the boat" this time, referring to Japan's failure to support the United States militarily in the 1991 war against Iraq. (He has apparently forgotten that Tokyo bankrolled operations to the tune of $13 billion.)
