Japan Notebook: Is Hatoyama really staking his life on the issue?

At age 77, Hiroshi Kojima still works for the Institute for International Policy Studies founded and headed by former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone.

Previously, Kojima headed the secretariat of the now-disbanded New Liberal Club. Kojima served for seven years as vice president of Zengakuren (All-Japan Federation of Students' Self-Governing Associations), when he was a university student.

Koichiro Shinohara, 71, also served as vice president of the same organization.

In late March, the two septuagenarians were invited to speak at a symposium organized by university students of their grandchildren's generation. The topic was student protests against revisions to the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty in 1960.

In June of that year, student activists staged demonstrations, besieged the Diet building and clashed with police, shouting, "Anpo hantai" (down with the security treaty). Many people were injured and a female student was killed.

Kojima and Shinohara said they also took part in the student protests out of an acute sense of crisis.

However, they said what evoked their sense of danger was not the provisions of the revised security treaty but their concern that then-Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi (1896-1987), whom they believed to be a war criminal (he was imprisoned but not indicted), might be aiming to revive militarism.

A planned visit to Japan by U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969) was canceled because of the turmoil and Kishi stepped down as soon as the treaty was ratified by the Diet.

Douglas MacArthur II (1908-1997), the U.S. ambassador at the time, had grown wary of surging anti-U.S. sentiment in Japan. However, the student movement was more anti-Kishi than against the United States, according to the two erstwhile student activists.

Edwin Reischauer (1910-1990), who succeeded MacArthur in 1961, understood the situation and made a major effort to win over Japanese sentiment.

Strained Japan-U.S. ties

If the 1960 revision of the security treaty is remembered as the event that shook Japan-U.S. postwar relations, the situation facing Japan today, half a century later, may be a different kind of crisis.

Since the administration led by Yukio Hatoyama came into being last September, the relationship between Tokyo and Washington has been strained over the issue of relocating the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Ginowan, Okinawa Prefecture. The two governments have never been so out of sync over security policy during the past 50 years.

After the 1960 student protests subsided, the Japan-U.S. security system quietly took root in Japan.

The 1972 reversion of Okinawa to Japanese sovereignty was a milestone for bilateral ties.

No doubt the stable relationship owed much to the delicate balance between pacifist Article 9 of the Constitution and the bilateral alliance under which the United States pledged to defend Japan against aggression.

It is a fact that parts of East Asia remain unstable. Still, it doesn't seem right that after so many years, so many U.S. military bases are spread across Japan. It's as if the postwar U.S. occupation never ended, even though the Cold War is long finished.

Moreover, most of the facilities are concentrated in Okinawa Prefecture. Residents there have been disturbed by accidents and crimes involving U.S. personnel.

Under President George W. Bush, the world was thrown into confusion by the U.S. invasion of Iraq. During last year's Lower House election campaign, Hatoyama, as opposition leader, pledged to bring back the Futenma relocation problem to square one and called for relocation of the facility "overseas or at least outside of Okinawa."

His thinking was not off the mark, in my opinion.

But achieving that goal is easier said than done. U.S. Marine commanders have no intention of losing the strongholds in Okinawa. Furthermore, no prefecture is willing to accept U.S. military bases. Okinawans also have mixed feelings about the bases issue.

Amid all this, the U.S. administration of Barack Obama is struggling to clean up the mess in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The government is in a position to solve an equation with multiple unknowns, so to speak. It has yet to brace itself and come up with a firm basic policy. Despite this background, instead of acting as one voice, Cabinet ministers were going off at tangents, adding to the confusion. What are the prime minister's intentions? His comments were incoherent. No wonder Washington is at a loss.

Ichiro Hatoyama's determination

Hatoyama, having stated unequivocally that he favored the "outside Okinawa" option, said March 31 during a Diet showdown with LDP President Sadakazu Tanigaki that he had a plan in mind and stressed yet again that he would settle the issue by the end of May.

He then went on to say, "I will stake my life on my actions and will come up with results without fail." He asked the public "to trust the government."

Hatoyama did not come right out and say he would resign if he failed, but he expressed his determination to stake his political life on the issue.

Later, in a Diet session, Hatoyama said that he was ready to put his post as prime minister on the line.

His attitude reminded me of a prime minister who once burned his bridges in the Diet so as to continue with difficult diplomatic negotiations. That person was none other than Ichiro Hatoyama (1883-1959), the current prime minister's grandfather.

Ichiro Hatoyama came to power by promising to normalize Japan-Soviet relations. But even after the 1955 formation of the LDP through the merger of conservative parties, things did not go as planned. This is because Hatoyama was confronted by opposition within the LDP, pressure from the U.S. government and sabotage by the Foreign Ministry.

Frustrated, Sanshichi Hanyu (1904-1985), a lawmaker of what was then the Japan Socialist Party, went on the attack at the Upper House Budget Committee on Feb. 29, 1956, by saying: "If (normalization of Japan-Soviet relations) does not materialize, it would be a serious breach of a public pledge. In that case, is the prime minister ready to take political responsibility?"

The prime minister responded: "Of course, I will take responsibility in the event normalization fails."

The negotiations progressed and in October that year, he visited Moscow and made good on his promise to restore diplomatic relations. Suffering from the aftereffects of a stroke, the 73-year-old prime minister moved around in a wheelchair. He must have literally staked his life to carry out his promise.

The normalization of Japan-Soviet relations was a diplomatic initiative aimed at changing Japan's "exclusive devotion to the United States." What his grandson is now trying to achieve has something in common with that.

But the administration is having a hard time. When Hatoyama met with Obama in Washington on April 12, he was given the brush-off. On Tokunoshima island in Kagoshima Prefecture, which Hatoyama envisioned as a possible relocation site, more than half of the residents took part in a rally to express their opposition. In Okinawa Prefecture on Sunday, some 90,000 held a rally and adopted a resolution that calls for the relocation of the Futenma base outside the prefecture. How does he intend to break the deadlock? Hatoyama can't see the light at the end of the tunnel.

As it is, the administration is suffering from dismal approval ratings. If Hatoyama fails, what is on the line is the survival of his administration rather than Japan-U.S. relations. May is just around the corner. The prime minister, who said he would "stake his life" to settle the matter "without fail," has no choice but to risk his political life to deal with the situation.

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Yoshibumi Wakamiya is an Asahi Shimbun columnist.