Welcome to Asia 2025.

I'm Maryann Keady

F: In spite of promises that Prime Minister Koizumi had made earlier that he was going to visit Yasukuni war shrine today on the anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War Two, he did instead go two days ago.

Now, the problem is, is this has really not solved the controversy surrounding his trip to the shrine. China and South Korea remain very angry that he went at all because of the presence of 14 class A war criminals who are enshrined there.

M: But tears are being shed in China too where memories of the War are also still fresh. In Nanjing a few survivors remain from one of the most violent episodes of the Japanese occupation.

F2: (Language translated) In my family, seven people were killed including one child. I was seriously injured. My aunt was raped and then killed; my grandfather was killed by a bayonet gun.

M: Memories of the War have soured relations with Japan and many people here feel the horror of what happened can't be forgotten.

Asia2025: This week on Asia2025 we look at Japan China relations and the role of Japan in reigning in the growing superpower.

Is US support for an armed and militaristic Japan causing instability in North Asia? Or, is Japan a natural and obvious US ally who along with India and Australia can help contain the military ambition of China in the Pacific?

C: The Department of Defence makes no bones about the fact ... they use the phrase, what they would like to see Japan become is an East Asian Britain. That is, our number one poodle who does everything we tell them to do and they do it.

The intent is to use the power of Japan and the growing anti-Chinese sentiment in Japan and to try and counter Chinese influence, to also inflame Japan as to an alleged threat from North Korea.

This has been I think, a fairly consistent policy.

Asia2025: All this and more, this week on Asia 2025.

Japan China relations have had their fair share of blow-ups over the last few years.

Issues such as the visit to the Yasukuni war shrine by Japan’s former leaders, and the revision of school textbooks to omit atrocities perpetrated by Japanese forces has inflamed tensions between the two countries.

There has been anti-China riots in Japan and recently protests as the Olympic torch went through Tokyo. There's also been disputes over maritime territory, such as the Senkaku Islands, which both countries claim.

But more importantly it has been Japan’s decision to revise its pacifist constitution and take part in America’s missile defence project that has put these two neighbours on a high stakes collision course.

Is Japan America’s Asian poodle as Chalmers Johnson claims and what does this mean for security in North Asia? Of course, another obvious question is how much provocation will China endure before it strikes out with repercussions for the whole region?

So, danger on the high seas of the Pacific this week on Asia 2025.

Is a new militaristic Japan aimed at China? That’s a question we're asking this week as we look at increased tensions between the two powers and pressured by the US on Japan to take up arms, change their constitution and take part in missile defence.

Let's start first with the history of what happened after World War Two.

Why did the United States make Japan its ally in the Pacific?

Akira Iriye is Charles Warren Research Professor of American History at Harvard University. He has written widely on Japan American relations and on the Cold War in Asia.

He explains the history behind the US Japan alliance.

A: It fits quite simply, Japan was defeated by the United States and its allies in 1945 and anything could’ve happened but the United States decided in the late ‘40s, early 1950’s that it would need Japan as an ally in China in the Cold War that was beginning to be recognised as a serious threat to the United States and ... and to world peace and so on.

So, rather than keeping Japan forever demilitarised and weak and so on, and rather than turning to China as the main partner for US strategy, the decision is made to turn to Japan because China by then was turning communist and 1950, China signs the 30 year alliance with the Soviet Union.

So, from the US point of view China could not be counted upon as its ally. The only possible ally that the US had in that part of the world would be Japan. So that ... that’s the origin of the post-War US Japan security alliance which was consummated at the peace treaty of 1951 in San Francisco, which was followed by a mutual security pact which enabled the United States to return it's military bases in Japan and the alliance has been sustained up to this moment.

Asia2025: Like the Cold War, Japan today plays an important role in terms of Pacific security. It has a trilateral security agreement with Australia and the United States.

And it takes part in something called the Quadrilateral Initiative which is a naval group consisting of the US, Australia, Japan and India which conducted war games last year. It's been denied that this is a strategic partnership aimed at containing China.

And of course, there are the US bases in Japan such as Okinawa and Camp Zama, the site of US Army Corps headquarters relocated from Fort Louis Washington in 2004.

The Armitage Report, a document authored by Richard Armitage, former US Deputy Secretary of State, indicated the military importance of US bases in Japan today.

It stated, in matters of security, distance matters. Okinawa is positioned at the intersection of the East China Sea and the Pacific Ocean only about one hour’s flying time from Korea, Taiwan and the South China Sea.

US Japan relations have deepened at a military level in the last few years and there's been concern about the rolling back of the Japanese pacifist constitution, that the US itself helped draft at the end of the War.

The question of course, is whether this is aimed at China.

Christopher Hughes is author of many books on Japan’s new military posture, such as Japan’s Security Agenda, Military, Economic and Environmental Dimension. I asked him about the new military posture of Japan.

H: As I've argued in many other places and as I think has been attracting more international attention, I think Japan has definitely shown very significant change in its defence posture.

Of course, in the post-War period due to Article Nine, the so-called Peace Clause, this meant that essentially Japan only possessed ... the Japan self defence forces purely for the defence of its own national territory and really entrusted wider security concerns to the US Japan alliance.

But since the end of the Cold War and since the rise of North Korea as a clear and present danger but also because of longer-term concerns about the rise of China and because of more global security shocks and....

And the US alliance pressure we see in Japan, an evolving Japanese defence posture, which has meant that Japan is now doing much more beyond its own immediate national territory to some extent, through UN operations ... peace keeping operations but more through again the mechanism of the US Japan alliance.

And really what Japan has done is if you like, if the US is the sword of offensive power projection from Japan, well Japan is increasingly developing if you like, defensive power projection capabilities and forms of support for the United States.

So, they're working in a complimentary relationship which means that Japan now has a bigger regional role in support of the United States but also now a global role as far away as the Middle East, Iraq and the Indian Ocean.

Asia2025: He says that the new military posture reflects concerns not about North Korea, as often stated but about China and China’s ability to project power in the region.

H: China is definitely a major concern. I think it's in fact, it's the largest concern for Japan’s security policy over the if you like, the medium to the longer term.

North Korea’s short term has been a major concern for Japan but also I think, North Korea’s been used as a form of camouflage or legitimisation for Japan to expand its military capabilities in ways which are as equally or if not more designed to deal with the rise of China.

I think Japan has a number of concerns about China. Of course, Japan wants to engage China if possible politically and economically but it needs to hedge against China by strengthening its own capabilities and strengthening the US Japan alliance and there are a number of concerns for Japan.

One of course is China’s own ballistic missile capabilities and the general upgrading of China’s nuclear deterrent.

But I think what Japan is most worried about is the fact that China’s now beginning to show that it can project power beyond its own coastal waters and into the East China Sea, the South China Sea and into the seas around Japan and this could interfere with Japan’s sea lines of communication.

Asia2025: Sea lines of communication mean the maritime highways of our world and they're vital for trade and naval power.

Fuelling Chinese fears that a Japan is ready to take arms and counter a growing China has been the controversy over Japanese leaders’ visits to the Yasukuni war shrine.

Yasukuni commemorates Japan’s war dead but it is also where Japan’s class A war criminals are buried. Millions of Chinese died at the hands of Japanese soldiers and China considers these visits a provocative act by its neighbour.

David McNeill a journalist from Japan Focus explains.

D: The Japanese version, Yasukuni shrine enshrines 2.5 million souls of people who died in Japan’s wars over sort of 100 years. And that includes a large number of war criminals.

Most of the attention goes to the class A war criminals who led Japan to war during World War Two and the Pacific War in Asia. But there are hundreds of class D and class C criminals as well. It's about 1,000 people in total.

So, in effect, when the Japanese politicians go to Yasukuni to ... to pay their respects, they appear to the rest of Asia to be supporting the War that Japan started and waged across Asia from 1933 to 1945. Japan invaded China. It began that invasion officially in 1933. It waged a brutal war there even by the standards of colonialism anywhere they behaved with enormous cruelty, they killed an untold number of people.

The ... the nominal estimates are 20 to 30 million people. They imprisoned and forcibly raped women across China and when they left, most of the Chinese people who when the ... when the War ended, most Chinese people believed that Japan would atone for what it did.

But instead what you have every year, and we've just seen actually yesterday, 62 lawmakers from the Japan’s parliament visited Yasukuni to pay their respects. So, every year you have this ... this ritual where politicians go there and pay their respects to the people who led the War in China and you can see where that would enormously anger Chinese people.

Asia2025: Since 1996, nationalists have been trying to rewrite historical textbooks, whitewashing Japanese war crimes. In 2005, anti-Japanese riots broke out in China over the Japanese government’s support for the war revisionism in schools and it's fuelled much tension between the two countries.

David McNeill says underlying this new nationalism is an ambiguity about what the rise of China means and that in Japan the three-letter word, war, is mentioned.

D: There's a sense that China is a growing power, that it's encroaching on Japan. These sort of undigested historical issues between them don’t make things easier.

So there are among the conservatives, conservative rights in Japan, there's this sense that well, eventually China is going to be your enemy and occasionally you hear them say very ... the conservative politicians say very specific things.

Again, Shintaro Ishihara who is Tokyo’s governor once said, well, China should be broken up because it's too big. And he openly kind of talks about the potential for war with that country.

Asia2025: But is this historical revisionism and a push for Japan to renounce its pacifist constitution? A military fear of China or an economic one?

Chalmers Johnson, President of the Japan Policy Research Institute.

C: Japan sees the rise of China and it's tremendous economic growth as a direct threat to not particularly a military threat, just a direct threat to Japan’s position as the leading economic and inherent ... intrinsic superpower of East Asia.

That Japan is clearly in decline, moving into a second category of nations and is having tremendous difficulty adjusting to it. Their ... their answer to this is to maintain the old American hegemony in East Asia based on cruise missiles, carrier task forces and a very large number of military bases ... to maintain this as long as possible.

The Chinese go along with it but they don’t like it. They particularly do not like the idea of Japan seen as now an East Asian Britain. As a new counterfoil in some ways toward China’s legitimate position in East Asia.

Asia2025: So, is America pushing Japan as many commentators have claimed, down the track of militarism to ensure that China is economically and military contained?

Chalmers Johnson again.

C: The Department of Defence makes no bones about the fact ... they use the phrase, what they would like to see Japan become is an East Asian Britain. That is, our number one poodle who does everything we tell them to do and they do it.

The intent is to use the power of Japan and the growing anti-Chinese sentiment in Japan and to try and counter Chinese influence, to also inflame Japan as to an alleged threat from North Korea.

This has been I think, a fairly consistent policy. It's included things like Colin Powell’s statement in ... in Japan when he was Secretary of State that Japan would never sit in the UN Security Council unless it got rid of Article Nine of the ... of its constitution, that is, the peace clause. I would tend to say nobody in his right mind wants Japan to sit in the UN Security Council so long as it adds up to nothing more than another vote for the United States, which is basically all that it would mean right now.

But yes, I think particularly the negotiations over re-deployment of bases in Japan and making Japan a ... a major control centre for American imperialism as ... as well as only what, two years ago, the negotiating with Japan to include the Taiwan issue as of strategic importance to Japan. It's hard to think of anything more inflammatory in Beijing than to bring Japan in as a ... as a custodian if you will. Or as a guarantor of the situation in Taiwan given the fact that Taiwan of course, was a former Japanese colony and that the Taiwanese government particularly Chen Shui-bian and the Democrat ... and the DPP have very close ties to the extreme right wing of the Liberal Democratic Party which rules in Japan.

So that I think there's no doubt about that.

Asia2025: You're listening to Asia 2025 and we're talking the remilitarisation of post-War Japan.

Akira Iriye says the nationalism and new militarism of Japan supported by the US is very dangerous for the region.

A: That’s going to encourage the Chinese to justify their military expansion and other countries as well. I mean that’s going to be so destabilising. The Chinese and Koreans and Taiwanese and these people have not forgotten what they suffered from enhanced Japanese military power and they're not going to let that happen.

They're not going to let Japan simply rearm itself to turn itself into one of the major military powers under US pressure and they're not going to simply sit idly by when this happens. They're going to respond to that and so I think this is further going to destabilise the region.

Asia2025: The US and Japan have been working closely together on missile defence, which uses ground and sea-based interceptor and sensor systems, and have been focussing on what is known in military parlance as inter-operability. That is, integration of their militaries.

Christopher Hughes says China sees this cooperation as having an anti-China focus.

H: I mean Japan argues that BMDs are aimed against North Korea, that’s true.

But also I think it's quite clearly aimed against China’s ballistic missiles of which you know China has a great many.

It's designed to defend US bases in Japan against Chinese military threat, possibly even to deploy around Taiwan to support the United States in the event of a regional contingency. I think China sees very clearly that BMD is designed against itself.

China recently ... I mean it did protest a great deal in the late 1990s, early 2000s against BMD. But I think recently China has tended just to not to push the issue too much because it feels it just simply intimidates Japan and just pushes Japan closer to the United States.

But certainly I think yes, China feels that this is just another example of the US and Japan tightening their integration in order to counterbalance the rise of China.

Asia2025: Foreign policy experts often claim that Japan’s new military posture has to do with North Korea.

But David McNeill says North Korea is simply used by the Nationalist right and former Prime Minister’s - such as Shinzo Abe - to push for further militarisation.

D: The attitude towards North Korea in Japan is way out of proportion to the threat from North Korea. So, you know I did a story this ... on this about two years ago.

I looked at the press coverage of North Korean issues and I found that there are thousands and thousands of stories in the press every year about every aspect of you know the sort of North Korean threat in inverted commas.

And they tend to be sort of over the top, you know like Korea has fired a missile into the Japan sea sort of aimed ... supposedly aimed at Japan and that missile track got such enormous coverage in Japan that it in effect pushed Japan closer in the direction of revising it's constitution.

And I think there's an element in which this sort of North Korean threat exaggerates it as it is, is being used by the Nationalist right. You know the Nationalist right knows that - they have tried very hard over the years to change the constitution and to make Japan into a sort of a normal country again in inverted commas but they haven’t succeeded.

And if you look at some of the people who most strongly desire to change the constitution including ex-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, they have sort of rattled the sabre very successfully against North Korea.

They’ve played up this threat.

Asia2025: On top of this, in 2005, Japan declared it had a common strategic objective with the United States on Taiwan.

Unsurprisingly, this angered China and as many of you know, China sees Taiwan as part of the mainland.

Why would Japan if it was serious about not provoking its large neighbour indicate that in the case of cross-straits tension it might side with the US strategic objective?

Christopher Hughes says that Japan’s position is ambiguous - but there are reasons for the US and Japan to be working together on Taiwan.

H: And I think Taiwan is very much exercising Japanese thinking about the threat from China. And I think if you look at Japanese defence planning, it's very much geared to trying to support the United States in the event of regional contingencies.

So, you know missile defence is designed to help defend Japanese territory but also US bases on Japanese territory because Japan knows that in the event of a Taiwan Straits crisis, China is possibly likely to try and exert some leverage on the United States by attacking its more exposed bases in Japan.

And you know a lot of the exercises that Japan and the United States are conducting together are designed to defend Okinawa and Japan’s southern islands, so that Japan will be a very firm base for the United States to be able to deter China in the events of a Taiwan Straits contingency.

And I think this is very much bound up as I said earlier with the general fear of the rise of China.

And if it were to attack Taiwan, what that would do, in terms of affecting Japan’s maritime interests but also in terms of you know, if Japan and the United States are not seen to be strong together in deterring China over Taiwan, then inevitably then, this may mean that United States is seen to be less resolute and implacable in the defence of Japan itself.

So I think Taiwan is a very serious concern of Japanese defence planning.

Asia2025: The problem is of course, that Japan has a bit of a strategic dilemma.

If the US keeps pressuring it to take up arms with the possibility of war with China, it could be catastrophic for the people of Japan who have already endured nuclear warfare.

And yet, can it risk not being armed as the US and China fight it out for Pacific Supremacy?

Christopher Hughes.

H: There is a lot of pressure, both indirect and direct and I think there are many people in the US administration who know exactly which buttons to push in terms of trying to influence key decision makers in Japan.

But I think there are many people in Japan who are happy to use this foreign pressure and sort of turn it internally to their own purposes in order to push forward their agenda of trying to so-called ... so-called normalisation of Japan’s security role.

But there's also I think a lot of resistance within Japan as well. As I said you know the ... Japan traditionally has had to if you like, hedge between what are called alliance dilemmas of abandonment and entrapment.

On the one hand, Japan needs to prove to the United States that it's a sufficiently reliable ally, that the United States won't abandon it if it is no longer indispensable as an ally, which would leave Japan to fend for itself which would be a very costly and dangerous situation.

But on the other hand Japan wants to avoid so-called entrapment. It doesn’t want to become sucked into US strategy and become just a sort of an extension. It doesn’t want the self-defence forces just to become a ... a sort of automatic extension of the US forces in ... in the region.

Asia2025: But is there a danger in the idea of China as a threat?

Akira Iriye says the notion of China ‘as the enemy’ is not very wise.

A: We live in the 21st Century and this kind of all geopolitical thinking that just because China’s rising therefore other countries ought to try to suppress it, keep it from becoming a great power. It's a very old fashioned 19th Century, 20th Century kind of thinking and we should remember that that kind of geopolitical thinking produced two wars, two major world wars and produced the Cold War.

Unless you get away from that kind of thinking, we cannot have a more peaceful 21st Century.

Asia2025: He says the key is to focus on economic integration and not treat China as a military threat.

A: So, we're talking about a ... a worldwide global economic giant and the Chinese are not so foolish as to think that they should turn that economic might to military power. I mean they’ve got so much to alleviate poverty domestically; they have to work on their environmental problem and so on.

So, I think we have to consider ways of sharing Chinese energies and Chinese efforts into those more constructive projects, environment and regional peace and economic integration.

But to constantly harp on the theme of China as a great military power is ... is the wrong way to do it I think because it's just going to turn them very defensive and more nationalistic.

Asia2025: Well, I hope the Pentagon is listening in.

Many views, a big strategic struggle and one program here on Asia 2025.

I'm Maryann Keady.

You’ve been listening to Asia 2025.

Thanks for listening, have a great week.