Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
more moderate politicians both within the ruling LDP and Minshut
-
support
the maintenance of Article 9, while believing it necessary to add legislation
that speci
first quarter of 2004 when all the rage in the media was about
the dispatch of the SDF to Iraq, I had a chance to go to Hiroshima, the place
that de
s past war experiences. One year
after the invasion and a few months after the SDF had been dispatched to
Iraq, I found myself in the Peace Memorial Park talking to a student from
Hiroshima University. Michiko was upset about Japan
nes itself so heavily in terms of Japan
'
'
s apparent power-
lessness in the face of its long-term ally the USA
s invasion of Iraq. This student
was not a Soka Gakkai member or Komeito supporter, and in fact disliked
Kanzaki, the then leader of Komeito, although she wasn
'
'
t exactly sure why.
She told me,
I hate the way Koizumi speaks to Bush in English, it shows
the Japanese prime minister
'
'
s inferiority. Why should he not speak in his own
language as equals do?
While the Peace Bell near the atomic bomb dome
could on occasion be heard in the background during our conversation,
something that eerily reminded every visitor of the tragedy that had once
happened there, Michiko went on to talk about how upset she was that Japan
could never say
'
to the USA. However, she also confessed that while she
cared about what she saw as the illegality of Japan having dispatched the
SDF to Iraq, most of her friends, all university students, were not interested
in politics. She felt that young people from Hiroshima mostly wanted to
forget where they were from because of the victim status it brought them. She
admitted that when she travelled outside Hiroshima, she sometimes would
refrain from telling people where she was from because,
'
no
'
'
I know they look at
me and think,
“
oh you are from that place where that horrible thing hap-
pened
lack of interest in what
was going on, their lack of interest in politics and their desire to not get
involved.
I met with a number of academics while in Hiroshima, one of whom was
Wade Huntley, an American specialising in international relations and work-
ing for the Peace Institute in Hiroshima. He told me how supporting the US
”'
. Yet Michiko felt frustrated about her friends
'
-
led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 in fact gave the LDP an opportunity to
move towards its long-term desire to establish Japan as a legitimate, military
player in the international community (conversation with Wade Huntley, 08/
03/2004). In Japan, people had been presented by their government with the
same speechifying as in the West, which argued that the situation in Iraq was
escalating into a choice between removing Saddam Hussein or facing the
consequences of his capacity for developing weapons of mass destruction.
Apart from what we now know were exaggerated claims made about Saddam
Hussein, what also played on the minds of many Japanese people was the
suspicious behaviour of North Korea during this time. There was a lingering
conviction that in case of a missile attack from North Korea, who else would
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