Political Survival and Yasukuni in Japan's Relations with China

Mong Cheung

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138945708
• eBook ISBN: 9781317369486
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Japanese History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

What role does the political survival of prime ministers play in Japan's relations with China over the Yasukuni issue? Three Japanese prime ministers, including Nakasone Yasuhiro, Hashimoto Ryutaro and Abe Shinzo, complied with China's demands and stopped visiting the controversial Shrine in 1986, 1997 and 2007, respectively. By contrast, the Yasukuni controversy intensified between 2001 and 2006 when a popular Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro was determined to pay regular homage to the Yasukuni Shrine annually. Prime Minister Abe, who previously demonstrated restraint over the issue in his first term between 2006 and 2007, visited the Yasukuni unexpectedly in 2013 but not in 2014 or 2015. To explain this variation, this book presents an alternative interpretation of Japan's official responses toward China's pressure over the Yasukuni issue between 1985 and 2015 by applying a political survival approach that highlights the domestic political legitimacy of the Japanese prime minister or the ruling party.

This book will be of great interest to students and researchers of Sino-Japanese relations, Japan's foreign policy and international relations.

1 Introduction

The “history problem” occupies a prominent position in the relations between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Japan. As one of the crucial issues pertaining to history, Japanese prime ministers’ visits to the Yasukuni Shrine – a place honoring nearly 2.5 million Japanese war dead including 14 Class-A war criminals – have been overshadowing relations between the two most important powers in East Asia over the past three decades. Since 1985, Japan has been officially pressured by China over the Yasukuni issue whenever a prime minister visited the Yasukuni Shrine or a prime minister declared his intention to visit the Yasukuni Shrine. Three Japanese prime ministers – Nakasone Yasuhiro, Hashimoto Ryutaro, and Abe Shinzo – complied with China’s demands and stopped visiting the controversial shrine in 1986, 1997, and 2007, respectively. The Yasukuni controversy intensified between 2001 and 2006 when the popular Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro took office and was determined to pay regular homage to the Yasukuni Shrine annually. In 2013, again, the sudden Yasukuni visit by Prime Minister Abe, who previously demonstrated restraint over the issue in his first term, also greatly undermined political trust between China and Japan.

Japan’s varying responses to China’s pressure on the Yasukuni issue in the past three decades demonstrates an interesting comparison for understanding the essence of this controversy in Sino-Japanese relations. On the one hand, a careful investigation of those Japanese prime ministers who complied or occasionally complied with China’s demands would lead us to find that they had all been active supporters of prime ministerial visits to the Yasukuni Shrine before they took office. Nakasone has been widely regarded as one of the most influential politicians promoting Japanese neoconservatism. As early as the 1970s, Nakasone had been actively advocating legislation to give state protection to the Yasukuni Shrine; Hashimoto, another Japanese prime minister who complied with China’s demands, in 1996, was the president of the Japan Society of Bereaved Families (Nihon Izokukai) between 1993 and 1995. In 1994, Hashimoto visited the Yasukuni Shrine by following a Shinto ritual as Minister of Commerce and Trade, causing turmoil both at home and abroad; Abe, similarly, had consistently supported prime ministerial visits to the Yasukuni Shrine before he took office in 2006. During his service as Chief Cabinet Secretary in the third Koizumi administration from October 2005, Abe was critical of China’s protests on the Yasukuni issue and defined China’s pressure as an intervention in Japan’s domestic affairs.¹ Abe visited the Yasukuni Shrine in December 2013 but not in 2014 or 2015.

On the other hand, Koizumi, the charismatic prime minister who had consistently rejected compliance with China’s demands over the Yasukuni issue from 2001 to 2006, showed little interest in Yasukuni before he took office. In Japanese political circles, Koizumi has often been regarded as an activist of economic affairs, particularly over policy areas related to postal reform and privatization. Although Koizumi used to visit the Yasukuni Shrine in 1997 as minister of health, labor and welfare during the Hashimoto administration, he was not a political figure as deeply involved in the field pertaining to state protection for the Yasukuni Shrine compared with Nakasone, Hashimoto, and Abe.² The central questions of this study are derived from the comparison stated above: Why did Japanese prime ministers who originally supported official Yasukuni visits comply with China’s demands, but not the one who was not previously enthusiastic over Yasukuni visits? Facing protests from Beijing, why do the Japanese prime ministers sometimes visit the Yasukuni Shrine but sometimes not? What is the vital factor that determines this variation?

This book is about political survival and Yasukuni controversies in Japan’s relations with China. It presents an alternative interpretation of Japan’s official responses to Chinese pressure over the Yasukuni issue between 1985 and 2015 from the perspective of domestic political rivalry. In the current literature on Sino-Japanese relations, the pattern of Japan’s responses to China’s pressure over the Yasukuni issue has rarely been studied systematically. In the general discussion of Japan’s responses toward China’s pressure, Japan’s concessions to China have often been interpreted as being influenced by a set of macro factors such as the sense of guilt due to the past, the admiration of Chinese civilization, and the presence of China lobbyists.³ Japan’s resistance to China’s pressure, on the other hand, has been frequently linked with factors such as individual preferences of the prime minister, the emergence of nationalism and neoconservatism in Japanese domestic politics, and an assertive foreign strategy toward a rising China.⁴ Perhaps influenced by progressing analytical practices, it is generally assumed that Japan’s responses to China’s demands over the Yasukuni issue are related to individual, social-ideological and foreign strategic factors.

This study offers an alternative interpretation to Japan’s responses to China’s pressure over the Yasukuni issue from the perspective of political survival. As I will argue throughout the following chapters, the limitation of the preceding interpretations is that they cannot adequately explain the variation of Japan’s responses to China’s pressure over the Yasukuni issue in the past three decades. Instead, this study introduces an internally consistent interpretation to Japan’s responses to China’s pressure over the Yasukuni issue by applying a political survival approach that highlights the rationality of individual political actors and the domestic legitimacy of individual leaders or of the ruling party. In this study, I argue that the domestic political legitimacy of Japanese prime ministers or the ruling party has been a vital factor that affects Japan’s official responses to China’s pressure over the Yasukuni issue in the past three decades. I demonstrate that political survival consistently played a role during the Nakasone, Hashimoto, Koizumi, and Abe administrations from the 1980s to the 2010s. This study suggests that Japan’s responses to China’s pressure over the Yasukuni issue should be also understood in the context of the domestic political survival of Japanese prime ministers or the ruling party.

Current interpretations

Most studies in the current literature related to the so-called Yasukuni problem (Yasukuni mondai) are descriptive and normative in nature. Most of them approach the topic by considering the issue in the context of Japan’s war responsibility, the conflicts of identity politics, the constitutional principle on the separation of politics and religion and the emergence of conservative nationalism in Japanese politics. The majority of these works do not make efforts to associate themselves with a theoretical approach. A similar trend is also revealed in the literature on the Yasukuni controversy in the arena of Sino-Japanese relations studies. Without a solid theoretical framework, analysts in Japan and China in particular often find themselves listing multiple factors in comprehensive but analytically less interesting ways.⁵ Although most scholarly works in the field do not intend to offer a systematic examination of Japan’s official responses to China’s pressure over the Yasukuni issue, three theoretical approaches, explicitly or implicitly, are often employed in their interpretations. They are: the individual approach, the social-ideological approach, and the foreign strategy approach.

The details and specific claims of each school will be reviewed critically in Chapter 2. Here, I offer a brief introduction of these schools and demonstrate how those interpretations are different from the perspective developed in this study. The individual approach focuses on the individual preference of the Japanese prime minister regarding the Yasukuni issue. It assumes that the intention, personality, and psychological condition of individual leaders influence the outcome of Japan’s policy toward China. In explaining Japan’s responses to China’s pressure on the Yasukuni issue, the proponents of this approach highlight the attitude of the prime minister toward the past war history and imply that the prime minister’s view of wartime history determines Japan’s response to China’s pressure. The social-ideological approach emphasizes the role of ideational, cultural, and generational factors in Japan’s responsiveness to China’s pressure over the Yasukuni issue. To explain Japan’s concession, the proponents of this approach often highlight the decline of progressive forces previously led by the Japan Socialist Party (JSP), the change of generation among Japanese politicians, and the emergence of Japanese neoconservatism and nationalism. Scholars who adopt this analytical approach tend to link Japan’s responsiveness to Chinese pressure on the Yasukuni issue to those shifts within Japanese domestic politics and social thought. The foreign strategy approach posits that Japan’s responses to China’s pressure over the Yasukuni issue should be interpreted in the context of Japan’s changing foreign strategy toward China. To put the issue in terms of the logic of changing international material power in East Asia, the scholarship at large often argues that Japan has been uncomfortable with the rise of China since the mid-1990s. By demonstrating resistance toward Chinese pressure over this issue, Japan intends to seek first-class political power and develop a normal relation with China, which shows no sense of wartime guilt toward China anymore.

What are the shortcomings of these existing interpretations? As I will discuss in Chapter 2 in detail, these interpretations fail to offer an internally consistency to explain the change of Japan’s responses to Chinese pressure over the Yasukuni issue. As stated in the central question outlined above, existing interpretations cannot adequately explain why Japanese prime ministers sometimes visit Yasukuni but sometimes not when they were facing protests and pressure from Beijing. Why did those Japanese prime ministers who had been consistently advocating official visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, such as Nakasone and Hashimoto, comply with China’s demands, but not Koizumi, who had not been previously enthusiastic about Yasukuni visits? In particular, all three approaches in the existing literature fail to explain Abe’s inconsistent response to China’s pressure. Abe had been actively advocating prime ministerial visits to the Yasukuni Shrine and was widely regarded as a postwar-born Japanese prime minister with strong conservative beliefs who was determined to lead Japan’s walk out of the postwar era. Before assuming the premiership, Abe repeatedly stressed the legitimacy of Japanese prime ministerial visits to the Yasukuni Shrine and called for a strong stance on Japan’s China policy. Ironically, it is also Abe who compromised when confronted with Beijing’s demands at the beginning of his term in 2006 and effectively ceased to visit the Yasukuni Shrine during his whole tenure in office. In 2013, one year after returning to power, Abe visited the Yasukuni Shrine but demonstrated restraint again in 2014 and 2015. Why did Abe refrain from visiting the Yasukuni Shrine between 2006 and 2007? Why did Abe comply with Chinese demands in 2014 and 2015, but not in 2013? According to the individual, social-ideological, and foreign strategy approaches, Abe is a perfect example of one who should have consistently refused China’s demands and continued to visit the Yasukuni Shrine. However, history gives us a different story. In this sense, interpretations emphasizing the role of individual preferences toward the past, the emergence of Japanese nationalism, the influence of China lobbyists, and the impact of generation and culture are all falsified by the policy variation in Abe’s response to China’s pressure over the Yasukuni issue. Limitations of the ubiquitous approach in the existing literature thus need to be revisited.

The role of political survival: approach, argument, and methods

This study aims to overcome the shortcomings of the current interpretations noted above. In this book, I do not intend to imply that domestic factors are solely responsible for decision making in Japan’s response to Chinese pressure over the Yasukuni issue. Individual, social-ideological, and foreign strategy factors are all important for understanding the context of Japan’s responses to Chinese pressure. But I do contend that these interpretations are insufficient, and the domestic political survival of prime ministers are also a critical and often omitted factor in the existing literature. In this book, I seek to solve the puzzle by employing a micro-analytical approach, focusing on the rationality of individual political actors and the importance of domestic political legitimacy of individual leaders or the ruling party in Japan’s decision-making process in response to Chinese pressure over the Yasukuni issue.

To answer the puzzle stated in the beginning of this chapter, two research strategies can be considered. One is to approach the puzzle inductively by tracing the details of a range of cases. Researchers can jump right into the several cases and trace the progression of the events. The advantage of such an approach is that it demonstrates how Japan responded to China’s demand in detail. It fails, however, to search for a pattern that will tell us when Japan is likely to give in to foreign pressure. Researchers will quickly get lost in the particulars and will not know what kind of data to search for. The second approach is to tackle the question deductively by setting a hypothesis derived from an existing theory. This leads to a systematic understanding of the issue if careful empirical studies are conducted and competing explanations are consciously compared. In the study of Sino-Japanese relations, factors that influence Japan’s responses to China’s demand over the Yasukuni issue have never been systemically studied. The most related work is in the scholarship of area studies, which has approached the issue by tracing the details of several cases with contextual interpretations.⁶ This study is conducted by following the second research strategy. In this book, I offer an alternative interpretation of Japan’s responses to China’s pressure by testing the hypothesis derived from established theory in international relations (IR).

Approach

The alternative micro-analytical interpretation developed in this study adheres to two basic assumptions revealed in the theoretical literature of contemporary IR studies. Firstly, this study shares the assumption that political actors are self-interested and their actions are conscious and chosen for their own political benefit. The analytical tool of the rational choice paradigm is not a novel idea in the modern study of political science. The term “rationality” refers to a consistent, value-maximizing choice within specified constraints.⁷ The rational choice paradigm stresses methodological individualism and assumes that individuals calculate expected benefits and costs of actions prior to adopting strategies for action. According to Graham Allison, four concepts constitute the core part of the rational choice paradigm: goals and objectives, alternatives, consequences, and choices. Goals and objectives refer to the interests and values of an agent that have translated into a payoff, utility, or preference function. These interests represent the desirability or utility of alternative sets of consequences. Alternatives imply that the rational agent must choose among a set of alternatives displayed before her or him in a particular situation. Consequences refer to a set of consequences or outcomes of choices attached in each alternative. Choices imply that the alternative whose consequences rank the highest in the decision maker’s payoff function will be chosen.⁸ Based on this assumption, the rational choice paradigm develops a systematic and parsimonious model that assumes that individuals are self-interested and have all the capacity, time, and emotional detachment necessary to choose the best course of action, no matter how complex the situation is. Rational actors choose the highest-ranked feasible actions available to them.

Secondly, this study highlights that domestic politics within a state play a vital role in explaining states’ international negotiation behaviors. For a long time, IR studies have been dominated by theories focused on international structure. Neorealism (structural realism), articulated by Kenneth Waltz, assumes that states are the primary actors in the anarchic world of international politics. States are unitary and rational and thus can select the best choice based on the distribution of power in th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on names and transliteration
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Political survival and Japan’s policy toward China on Yasukuni
• 3 Understanding Yasukuni: a historical overview
• 4 Refraining from the Yasukuni visit: the China–Japan Yasukuni controversy during the Nakasone (1985–86) and Hashimoto (1996–97) administrations
• 5 Differing responses: the China–Japan Yasukuni controversy during the Koizumi (2001–06) and Abe (2006–07) administrations
• 6 Policy variations: the China–Japan Yasukuni controversy during the second Abe administration (2012–15)
• 7 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index