STI News: To understand today's Japan, catch this movie

Jan 13, 2007 To understand today's Japan, catch this movie Clint Eastwood's latest film Letters From Iwo Jima gives insight into what Japan really wants By Tom Plate

MR AKIRA Amari, a big shot from Tokyo, thinks the world has the Japanese pegged all wrong. The country really isn't trying to metamorphose into some refurbished Godzilla military monster, claims Japan's new Economy, Trade and Industry Minister. But he accepts the fact that memories die hard and older generations, especially, find it hard to forget all the enormous pain and suffering that Japan once brought to bear on the Asian neighbourhood. But Minister Amari, looking at you straight in the eye, begs you to look at Japan in a straightforward way, too. He begs you, in fact, to look at the Japanese the way Hollywood's Clint Eastwood has done in his film Letters From Iwo Jima. That film, he avers, gives you the true picture of the Japanese. They are not warmongers, sadists or imperialists, but are nothing more nor nothing less than messed-up human beings like the rest of us - and more or less as miserable as everyone else caught up in the profound and all-encompassing misery of World War II. 'This movie left a deep impression in Japan,' he explained after a speech before the prestigious World Affairs Council in Los Angeles last week. 'It reminded everyone that in the history of our two great countries, there have been times of great conflict.' This, he says, must never happen again: 'The Japan-United States relationship is more important than ever.' This moving Eastwood film, already nominated as one of last year's best pictures, caught the Japanese eye and moved the Japanese soul. 'We were very much touched. What it shows...is that, be they the enemy or the ally, soldiers are all the same. It really caught the feeling of the average soldier on the ground.' Why did Japan fight so hard, so long and so obviously in such a disastrously losing cause? The Japanese soldier, Mr Amari explains, was scared out of his mind about what the Americans would do to his family and loved ones if they ever got to Japan. Notwithstanding whatever the posturing, in-denial Japanese commander on the ground was thinking - much less the wholly out-of-it generals back in Tokyo - the real Japanese soldier, knowing the war was lost, staked his honour on slowing the inevitable advance of the Americans as much as he could. The attitude in the trenches, therefore, was not to take over the world but rather to stop the enemy. Mr Amari argues that just this defensive mentality underlies Japanese military thinking today. The country is not hoping or planning or even remotely imagining a return to the bad old days of aggression, which left the nation half-burned to the ground and the economy reduced to a pathetic Third World status. On the contrary, the Japanese people - like the soldiers in the caves and tunnels of Iwo Jima - now only want to be able to defend themselves should, some day, the blowtorch of aggression be trained on them. They hope, therefore, to see major improvement in relations with China - a process that new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe initiated immediately upon taking office in Septembe r. They hope the very serious and potentially destabilising issues with North Korea are cleverly settled through negotiations. But most of all, they accept, Mr Amari reports, that the relationship with the US is the key to military moderation for Japan - not the goad to a wild rearmament that threatens neighbours. 'We feel very passionate' about the value of a defensive posture, says the minister, for any other military option would either end up sending Japan off onto a very bad road that offers but a stiff cliff at the end, or leave it vulnerable to enemies who perhaps wish to avenge old scores. Thus, Japan must always be seen as supporting other Asian countries, not threatening them; as encouraging greater economic and perhaps even some measure of regional political integration, not trying to play the divisive old game of divide-and-rule; and as dutifully and purposefully continuing its own internal economic reforms so as to provide not only a better life for its own people but also even more Japanese investment in other Asian economies. The passion for peace is reflected in the country's Constitution, of course, all but dictated by the conquering Americans. So why is Tokyo now trying to amend it to loosen restrictions on its military options? And why has the Department of Defence just recently been upgraded to a fully ministerial agency - a status long denied? Those continually distrustful of Japan will see in these tea leaves what they wish to envision. But after listening to the public pitch of Minister Amari, I began to think he is right. Japan wants to be strong only to make sure there is never another horrible war, like the one Eastwood's experienced eye caught pitch-perfect in his brave and important new film. See the film to understand today's Japan. The writer, a veteran US journalist, is a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy. Copyright: Tom Plate