East Asian Security Research Council reports in June issue of Sekai.
Key premiss : recent deployment of PAC3 systems in response to North Korean missile threat (intelligence info about which was supplied to Japanese gov’t in first instance by US Satellite Early Warning Centre) was an act of public misdirection with regard to the true nature of the threat and bluster with regard to the effectiveness of the US-designed trillion dollar Patriot Missile Defense System.
[ unofficial and unlicensed translation of content from June 2009 edition of Japanese current affairs journal 'Sekai' ]
INTRO (unabridged) : At around 11am on 5th April 2009, North Korea is believed to have launched a long-distance cruise-type missile of Taepodong-2 type specification from a facility on its Japan Sea coastline. The Japanese government speculates that the missile passed over the northernmost prefectures of Honshu with the first stage descending around 280km west of Akita in the Japan Sea and the second stage coming down over the Pacific. The Self-Defense Forces (SDF) made the judgement that the missile stages would not come down over Japanese territory and did not take aggressive countermeasures using Missile Defense (MD) systems. For the government as well as for the general population, it was most fortunate that no reports were confirmed of parts of the missile coming down on Japanese territory and also that there was no damage caused to planes or ships.
Meanwhile the whole country was shaken up by a kind of fever about North Korea’s long-distance cruise missile – ‘the Tepodon’. The MD system ‘operationally deployed’ for the first time by the Japanese governement, unable as it is to accurately project the course of and therefore intercept incoming missiles, amounted to little more than a gesture of reassurance for the public. The MD systems – whose cost to date has reached 1 trillion yen – were moved to the northern prefectures with no greater mission than to serve as an alibi. In the highly-unlikely case (according to SDF estimates) of the missile actually coming down on Japanese territory or (quite likely) of the MD system being engaged and failing to intercept the incoming object, there is no doubt that criticism of MD being ‘useless’ would now be considerably more intense. The Aso administration, struggling with dwindling support ratings, was working round the clock to release spot reports on the situation but ended up by releasing painfully inaccurate information on 4th April to the effect that the missile would be coming down or passing directly over Japan and that ‘there could be no escape’. We search for an explanation for this farce.
To whom to pass the buck?
The decision over which legal procedure to implement in response to the reported threat – that is, the manner in which the decision was taken and the final decision itself – was the true source of the public fuss created by the situation.
The Defense Ministry asserted – in response to North Korea’s announcement of its preparations to launch a satellite on a Tepodon-2 missile – that the Cabinet should issue a ‘Destruction Measure Order’ based on SDF Law Article 82, part 2, clause 1. The SDF Law literalizes two courses of legal action in such cases:
- in the case of air space breaches by cruise missile or other hostile body, the Defense Minister can issue a Destruction Measure Order after receiving Cabinet approval (Article 82, part 2, clause 1);
- when the certainty of a breach of air space by such a hostile body is not clear, preparations may be made in case of a sudden change in the situation leading to a certain breach and the Defense Minister may issue a Destruction Measure Order directly to the relevant forces (Article 82, part 2, clause 3).
The key difference between these two courses of action is that (1) requires Cabinet approval and subsequent action would be reported in the public domain, whereas (2) according to clause 3, would be executed without being made explicit to the public. In either case, of course, defensive countermeasures would be possible in the case of a hostile body coming down over Japanese territory.
But there are further finer points of difference between the two legal paths which are relevant to the discusssion here :
- In the case of (1) above, Cabinet approval is required and therefore the Cabinet Secretary would be the key responsible figure, whereas
- in the case of (2), the Defense Ministry would be the principal.
The North Koreans reported to the International Maritime Organization that between 4th-8th April they would launch a satellite on a rocket. According to that report, the first stage would come down over open territory in the Japan sea, with the second stage bearing the satellite proceeding over the north-eastern regions of Japan and coming down in open territory in the Pacific. The Defense Ministry asserted that the apparent risk of an accident or mis-launch leading to an impact on Japanese territory proved the need for the government to indicate its will to the public by making preparations for the implementation of counter-measures.
In the case of such an order being given, it was speculated that PAC3 Patriot missile systems would be mobilized to Akita and Iwate prefectures and that counter-attack SM3 missile-bearing Aegis destroyers ‘Kongo’ and ‘Choukai’ would be ordered to the Japan Sea. The Tepodon-2 missile is presumed to have a range of over 6000 kilometres and if it followed a typical flight path it would not normally be considered to be targetted at the Japanese mainland. If it was felt that the first stage of the rocket might come down over Japanese territory countermeasures would be justifiable but it is very difficult to ascertain with any degree of certainty the flight path of such an object. That is to say, it is a fact that the kind of situation in which aggressive counter-measures can be openly justified are very few and the government adopting a firm ‘counter-attack’ stance (even in the defensive sense) resulted in North Korea (who, it will be remembered, were all along claiming no more than a ’satellite launch’) becoming more staunchly defiant.
The PAC3 systems are based in Saitama, Shizuoka and Gifu prefectures and not in the north-eastern regions. The Defense Ministry proposed a plan for the Shizuoka-based systems to be transferred to Akita and Iwate.
The dillemma was whether a Cabinet resolution on preparations for the issuing of a ‘Destruction Measure Order’ as a deterrent would not in fact lead to the North Koreans hardening their position. In the case of the Maritime SDF, ships are on patrol as a matter of course and moving them to an alert status would not require any particular extra preparations or public announcements. The PAC3 systems, however, could not be moved without attracting public attention. If orders could be given on the basis of a Cabinet resolution (according to clause 1), the movement of the PAC3 missile systems would have been made easier since the action would be made public and the government could appeal to public support for its resolute response to the North Korean threat.
On the other hand, if it was judged that the missile – or parts of it – would come down over Japanese territory and the countermeasures had failed to prevent this, faith in the defensive capabilities of the MD system would be shaken and, still worse, this failure would be blamed on a dysfunction in leadership from the PM’s residence leading to the political risk of direct public criticism of the present administration.
Perhaps as a result of such fears, it was the Cabinet secretary – one of the aides closest to the PM’s residence – who opposed the Defense Ministry’s proposal and argued for the application of the clause 3 option which would allow the SDF to take countermeasures without the need for public disclosure. The true fear was probably that public disclosure of countermeasures of this nature would have necessitated the planning and preparation of evacuation and other ‘guidance’ procedures for the general populace (which would require cooperation from a number of government departments) and that this would have led to the situation ‘getting out of hand’.
The Defense Ministry, however, reluctant to follow a course which would leave it with full responsibility for any failures, would not yield on its insistence that action should be taken under clause 1 (ie., through a Cabinet resolution). From the general public’s point of view, it must have seemed that a good deal more energy was expended on the debate over legalities than on the counter-measures themselves or on explaining the situation to the general public. It was the same old story of bureaucrats battling each other to avoid responsibility in a decision-making process in which the public do not exist.
The Foreign Ministry swung its support round to the Cabinet Secretary on the basis that ‘a Cabinet resolution of the sort proposed by the Defense Ministry may stimulate an unhelpful response from North Korea.’ On this matter, their interests coincided. There remained, however, the difficulty that action taken under clause 3 – as proposed by the Cabinet Secretary and the Foreign Ministry – would not be disclosed to the public and so the discreet mobilization by the SDF of the PAC3 MD systems from their current 6 locations to the areas where they were needed would be made much more complicated. There was a very high chance that the movement of the PAC3 systems to new locations would be noticed by the civilian population and the intended secrecy of the operation would result in some kind of breakdown in public order (eg., panic flamed by media anxiety).
Confidence in the counter-attack capabilities of the PAC3 systems themselves is not high and their defensive radius is limited to around 20 kilometres. Nevertheless, if the systems were not moved to the areas over which the missile was predicted to pass – Akita and Iwate – and a stage or part of a stage of the object had come down over land, the government’s crisis management would be called into question.
The outcome of this debate was that although the Cabinet Secretary prevailed in that action would be taken based on clause 3 of the SDF law in question, a half-hearted compromise was made so that the Defense Ministry would not have to take full responsibility for the consequences by providing for the set up of a Security Group which would make all the decisions. Thus it seems that the Defense Ministry submitted to the Cabinet Secretary (by taking final responsibility for military counter-measures) in return for the government being prepared to take responsibility for the public relations aspect of the movement of the PAC3 systems (ie., their movement would be publicly disclosed).
It was only later that the uniformed services queried the wisdom of the media publicizing military operations that should be conducted secretly. The reason that this most basic of military principles (keeping the enemy in the dark about one’s intentions) was not properly observed was the inevitable result of the PAC3 systems being fairly eye-catching and very unlikely to pass unnoticed en route around the country and also of compromises made by the government in an internal battle to avoid responsibility. As if that were not enough, the whole purpose of clause 3 – to give the SDF freedom of action in critical situations – was actually undercut by the government’s decision to allow public disclosure of the operation after all – (translator’s note : the implication being that the Cabinet Secretary wanted to pass the matter off on the Defense Ministry for reasons other than military rationality). In other words, the discreet and secret dispatch of the Aegis ships to ensure national security without mobilizing the PAC3 systems – regardless of the greater wisdom, or not, of such a tactic – was rendered impossible; this was one of the indirect results of the struggle within the government over which legal course to take.
The government’s basic principle of maintaining an illusion of disbelief with regard to the likelihood of hostile bodies coming down on Japanese territory is covered by explanations of measures to be taken ’should the unthinkable occur’; but from the military or diplomatic point of view, was it really necessary to reposition Aegis ships and the PAC3 systems to Akita and Iwate?
To put the point briefly, the military rationale behind the countermeasures was rather thin. One at least has to ask whether there was any explicable military purpose for the positioning of the PAC3 systems, which only have a range of around 20 kilometres. The Patriot MD systems are designed to repel attacks on specific locations (for example, a military base or government installation) and cannot (except in fairly ridiculous numbers) protect entire regions. In this case, where the precise target of the incoming object was unknowable, one could argue that the mobilization of the Patriot systems was little more than an alibi for the government – striking a defensive pose to reassure the public. The government was left to pray that the missile did not come down on Japanese territory and prove the critics of the PAC3 system right about its ineffectiveness. Of course, from the military point of view, there was a sense in which this was a good chance to practice deploying the systems to new locations under ‘real’ conflict conditions.
What was even stranger about the PAC3 deployment was that one system was positioned in the grounds of the Defense Ministry in Tokyo. Aerial photography of the 4-missile array showed the marking ‘INERT’ on the missile bodies – in other words, the missiles were not armed. Media images of this sight seemed like a black joke – was the intention to send some kind of message to North Korea? Or was it merely a sign that the SDF have not bought enough live missiles from the USA to charge 4 systems? There was the additional embarrassment of the SDF trailer carrying one of the systems taking a wrong turn and getting lost en route. The author wonders what international society will have made of this farce – brought about through a struggle between politicians and bureaucrats to evade responsibility in Tokyo.
International Opinion
US Minister of State Clinton expressed her understanding of the course of action taken by the Japanese government in this issue, but let’s not assume that this reflects the true opinion of her government. Was not the main aim of any action to prevent North Korea from launching any missiles? Was Japan in line with this mission when it deployed PAC3 systems to new locations around the country? Of course, it is very unlikely that not deploying the PAC3 systems would have stopped the North from firing any missiles, but there was always the risk that a deployment would rile North Korea and be used by them as an excuse for their own belligerence.
One must also always consider how Japanese actions will impinge on the unresolved issue of abductions of Japanese nationals by North Korean agents. It is not hard to see the MD deployment as a kind of expression of desire to escape from the whole issue. The Foreign Ministry toed PM Aso’s line this time round, but there must have been a good deal of opposition within the department to the course of action being led by the Defense Ministry.
What did international society make of the Japanese action? One would not be surprised if international opinion were that Japan always loses its cool over North Korea and swings its fists wildly in some kind of reasonless rage – unable to draw up a roadmap for future reconciliation and resolution of differences.
In such a way, the Japanese position with regard to North Korea is not strengthened but weakened. Such a situation is only further compounded when, as recently, a group of LDP politicians follow the North Korean missile launch with calls for aggressive strikes on their military bases. How is the situation – or our international reputation – ever going to improve with reactions like this?
Furthermore, government officials commented on the defensive response to a North Korean ballistic missile launch to the effect that “you can’t shoot down a pistol bullet using a pistol” – implying the impossibility of the PAC3 system being able to defend Japan in such a situation. There were also statements revealing the government’s true feeling regarding tests of the missile defense system to the effect that “the only reason the enemy missile is able to be intercepted is that we get a message telling us they are about to launch.”
In response, defense minister Hamada argued that “all efforts have been made to ensure our defensive preparedness; I do not think along the same lines [as those quoted in the previous paragraph ]” and Cabinet Secretary Kawamura also moved to quell panic by saying that “the government is rising properly to its duty of ensuring the safety of the Japanese population. I do not share [the previous commenters'] fears.” Of course, either argument fails to engage properly with the military and political strategic reality of the situation and are no more than superficial arguments; one might say they symbolize the low level of consciousness of our political representatives with regard to the guaranteeing of national security.
Behind the Mistakes : Changes to the Information Flow
Amidst such internal confusion in the corridors of power, the government’s Conference on National Security held on March 27th concluded a ‘Response to North Korean Missile invasions of air space’ document to address the threat of long-distance missiles from that country. It was decided, amongst other things, that Defense Minister Hamada would issue a destruction order based on SDF Law 82, Paragraph 2, Clause 3 and that if it were executed, reports of the result would be immediately publicy revealed. Within 5-10 minutes of a North Korean launch local governments would be notified using the national emergency communications network and media organizations would also be notified. Within 30 minutes to an hour of launch the government would release data on the projected target area of the missile.
On 4th April, the North Korean government announced its intention to “launch a man-made satellite”. At 12:16 that afternoon the government released a statement that “an object seems to have been launched from North Korea”, followed 5 minutes later by a correction that this information was based on “a detection error”. Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Kawamura was forced to make a public apology for “causing concern among the public”. The reason he gave for this incorrect information being passed to media outlets and local government bodies was that the US Satellite Warning Centre had passed information about a launch to the Defense Ministry who had passed it to the PM’s residence, where the person in charge of monitoring such reports passed it on to the public.
This also seems like a simple case of human error, but we would like to show that it is another case resulting from internal government struggles to pass off responsibility.
April 4th 12:16, the Central Command Centre in the basement of the Defense Ministry receives an audio communication from Airforce General Command (Tokyo) : “Meshioka Tracking. Satellite Early Warning Centre (SEW) detection. Launch.” This would mean that the SDF radar tracking station at Meshioka (Chiba prefecture) had confirmed an aerial anomaly and an American satellite with infrared sensors had detected a launch trail. However, the section “SEW detection” is complete misdirection – a communications officer at the Airforce General Headquarters had just blurted out the phrase, no doubt due to having rehearsed it so many times.
Furthermore, the Internal Command Planning Agency officer who received the communication at Airforce headquarters interpreted and announced news of “SEW detection” as meaning that a “Launch” had been confirmed. This announcement, being monitored at the PM’s residence was passed to local government agencies and media organizations via the “Em-Net” emergency communications network, and then, as a consequence, this false information made its way onto international networks.
One minute later, at 12:17 Airforce Headquarters communicated to Central Command that “FPS5″ had lost track of the target object and that SEW was not registering any evidence of a launch. It took four minutes for the PM’s residence to start the job of correcting their previous warning.
Launch information, the release of which presupposes satellite detection and ongoing tracking, is passed from the US Military Command in Japan (Yokota base, Tokyo) simultaneously to both the Air Defense Control Corps (attached to Airforce headquarters) and Central Command. Although satellite detection and tracking data, if confirmed, should have been passed to Central Command, the official at Airforce General Headquarters took the information he received uncritically and furthermore added the announcement of a ‘launch’ without any prior checks. A lack of check and confirmation procedures and a lack of cool-headedness led to a deeply unprofessional series of mistakes.
A further problem was a sudden change to the rule for information flow in such situations introduced on the night of 3rd April. Previously, such communications would be checked for veracity and intelligence value by the Defense Ministry before being passed to the PM’s residence; under the new rule the information was passed to the PM’s residence without this checking stage. There was also the fatal administrative error which led to Defense Minister Hamada not even being notified of the announcement.
As a result, Defense Minister Hamada first hears of the North Korean “missile launch” watching NHK’s programme ‘Telop’ in the temporary “Operations Room” on the 11th floor of the main building of the Defense Ministry. This before the communication arrives from Central Command. Command Planning Council Head Tokuchi astounds Minister Hamada after the dissemination of the false information about a North Korean missile launch with the information that “the reporting system was changed at the instruction of the PM’s residence on 3rd (April)” and is left holding no little sense of distrust for Tokuchi and his colleagues on the Planning Council. Indeed it seemed that the Defense Ministry had ceased to be an organization with a Cabinet Minister at its head and turned into a live reporting system for the PM’s residence – except that it had not even managed to perform that task satisfactorily.
Thus, the whole ‘false detection’ problem saw the Defense Ministry too adrift in a system that had changed without its knowing. The situation could not be put down to a problem as simple as a mere sequence of human errors. This was an event that exposed the deeper problems of organizational rot and spiralling incompetence within the Defense Ministry as a whole.
Thus Prime Minister Aso’s move to improve public confidence in the government’s crisis response capabilities with a speedy provision of information ended up flying wildly off course. The government’s over-reliance on instant reporting caused it to over-reach itself in its response – a procedural and systemic aberration that will become a touchstone for future challenges to national security.
The Prime Minister, receiving the ‘launch information’ on 4th April, was soon walking out to answer the probing questions of waiting journalists at a hastily-arranged news conference; Cabinet Secretary Kawamura was on the phone to warn him of the inadequacy of the intelligence, but the Prime Minister was already outside the building. Directly before the questioning started, an aide accompanying the PM received the information from Kawamura, passed it on to PM Aso, whose expression turned grim as he turned on his heels and set off directly for the Crisis Response Centre. Had the Prime Minister completed his interviews, with no-doubt scathing criticism of North Korea, shame would have been piled on the Japanese government in spades.
“Bring me some accurate information. What the hell are you doing?” – Hamada faced off with the Defense Ministry official who had come to inform him of the inaccuracy of the initial intelligence and subsequent nationwide reporting. Hamada’s anger was clearly compounded by a conviction that “the chain of command has been overturned”, based on the knowledge he now possessed that one of the main reasons for the misjudgements in the situation were down to information being passed directly to the PM’s residence without passing through his hands first.
“This is the Defense Ministry’s responsibility. I expect everything to be running as it should from tomorrow.” It was all Kawamura could do in response to Hamada’s telephone call to stammer that “We are only human, but will be sure to work with a proper sense of responsibility”; he knew that the main part of the responsibility for this fiasco rested with the PM’s residence.
In addition to heightening civilian anxiety with unnecessary confusion, a heavy responsibility is to be borne for damaging the international reputation of and trust in Japan’s security operations and intelligence handling. Despite this being a situation where the dispersal of accurate information ‘even one second faster’ would have changed everything, the instant reporting system showed itself to be the weak link. So then, what were the organizational and systemic causes leading to such a fundamental and important failure? In fact, we have already touched on the core of the matter.
Chronology Disorder and the Pathology of ‘Instant Reporting’
According to government sources the trauma caused to government officials by the delay in communications to the Defense Ministry and PM’s residence on the day of the tragic accident involving the Aegis destroyer ‘Atago’ and a small fishing vessel (a collision on the morning of Feb 19th 2008; the fishing vessel was sunk and the two men on board were never found; an inquiry blamed inadequate lookout for nearby vessels) led to the spread of an obsession with “instant reporting”. When it came to internal communications there developed a culture of witch-hunting for anyone guilty of holding up the flow of information. This is what led to the disastrously panicky mindset of ‘instant reporting good, careful checking bad’.
Responsibility for the advent of this bankrupt situation must lie with Shigeru Ishiha, then Defense Minister, with his avoidance of responsibility, over-delegation to, blaming and punishment of subordinate staff and shuffling of personnel. Ishiha loudly declaimed the importance of political leadership and always insisted on all information being reported to him personally, but whenever it came to an accident or unfortunate event the first words on his lips were that “I have heard nothing of it”, followed closely by a promise “to severely punish those responsible”.
The pessimism and gloom now enveloping the Defense Ministry has been brought about by government officials ‘masquerading’ as politicians – acting to evade responsibility and win popularity. One cannot disallow sympathy with the majority of ministry officials but from the tax-paying public’s point of view this is a matter of collective responsibility.
Further, the line of communication in matters regarding missile defense operations runs from the Defense Ministry to the top brass at Airforce General Headquarters and the senior staff officers who support him. In the regular personnel changes in March, the individuals serving as senior staff officers changed, and the key post-holders serving at Airforce General Headquarters also rotated. It is also a fact that personnel affairs had stagnated somewhat at the Defense Ministry and SDF due to a delay of about a year in rotating previous General Senior Staff Officer Ito from his post. Having said that there were voices raised from within the Defense Ministry and related ministries at personnel rotation being carried out at such a critical time for national security – with reliable information already in about a forthcoming missile launch from North Korea.
On 5th April, North Korea announced that its ’satellite launch’ had been a success. On the other hand the North American Air and Space Defense Command (NORAD) released a report clearly denying the success of the launch stating that “nothing made it into orbit. The payload fell into the Pacific.”
Although Prime Minister Aso took the chance to put before the permanent members of the UN Security Council a draft resolution demanding ‘the cessation of all activities related to ballistic missile development and planning’, stolid opposition from China and Russia saw that limited to a statement from the Secretary General. In response, North Korea stated its intention to withdraw from the six-nation talks.
Was this launch a missile, or a rocket aiming to put a satellite into orbit? This question was raised and debated by the mass media, but bore little conclusive meaning as either answer would indicate the use of a system capable of conveying WMDs beyond the country’s borders. Rather, it was the government’s complete preoccupation with this question that raised the fear of Japan releasing information unavailable to North Korea which could have been used or manipulated by them. As initially feared, the problem with which Japan is left face-to-face after this fuss is the risk of a restart of the North Korean nuclear programme.
The 5th April launch could have been handled without the mobilization of the Missile Defense systems. The Transport Ministry had announced no risks to aviation or marine transport. Although it is little known, the SDF were dismissed from barracks the following day.
Although it may seem that this 24-hour delay was to test the reaction of North Korea, this was not the case. We hear that the Defense Ministry had been so busy dealing with the PM’s residence and mass media that “no thought had been given to the SDF leave order”.
Thus Command Planning Control decided to use the leave order as an opportunity and Administrative Vice-Minister Masuda spoke of it at his regular news conference that day to create an impression of normality. While Defense Minister Hamada debated whether or not to rescind the order, this impression of normality had obviously affected the individual regiments as they had already begun to leave their barracks. Those in SDF uniform had lost all trust in Command Planning Control and none were ready to follow orders from them.
Thus, it is the military that end up getting the bashing when in fact it was they who were sacrificed for the sake of political convenience and were clearly the victims of incorrect intelligence. From the SDF point of view, not only were they caught up in a bizaare “communication game” but also forced into a stage-show of an operation that ignored all concerns of military rationality. They must have been enraged.
As it happens, the Defense Ministry also released incorrect information the same day.
An announcement was made that the second stage of the missile was predicted to come down around 1270km east of Japan in the Pacific Ocean, but was almost immediately withdrawn. This was at the request of the head of the Situation Management Department. But that withdrawal was then in turn withdrawn and a statement released to the effect that “the content of the announcement is real and the actual crashdown point is currently being analysed and confirmed”. This of course, contributed to further confusion.
Cabinet Secretary Kawamura referred so many times before the press to this ‘1270km’ distance in the announcement that the Defense Ministry was unable to deny it and ended up having to deny instead that an attempt had ever been made to withdraw the announcement. Another episode, one might say, revealing how far the actions of government bodies can be overly focussed on ‘higher matters’ and insufficiently focussed on the civilian population they serve. Prime Minister Aso’s government looks to have taken unprecedentedly decisive action in response to a highly unlikely – though threatening – possibility, but at the heart of the matter was this political manoeuvering – out of sight of the general populace – to evade responsibility and the desire of officials within the administration to put on – for some reason – a performance.
[ Translator's note : An angry article - the residual feeling being one of frustration with the situation that the government has been put in by over-bearing US arms dealers, military planners and clever-ambitious politicians keen to take the chance to force an advantage over a weakened opponent, and a slightly defeatist note with regard to Japan's international reputation. For one thing, one cannot help but conclude that Japan was coerced into buying the PAC3 MD systems from the US. While certain individual officials (eg., former Defense Minister Ishiha) come in for severe criticism, the sense is very much one of 'and how could things really be any different?' - a sign of deep-rooted pessimism within government institutions. For those familiar with Japanese working habits and attitudes to social responsibility, it remains a mystery why American intrusion into issues of national security and policy-making is so despairingly tolerated. One is left to assume that, hopelessly devoted to certain ethical tenets with regard to social behaviour, and burdened with a profound sense of pacifism (also constitutionally-enshrined), the Japanese still find it difficult to play the game of international real-politik with any conviction (ie. as irresponsibly as their counterparts). Unfortunately, the humiliation resulting from events such as that outlined in the translation above are sure to only lead to a louder voice for the right. Having said that, we may see a resurgent DPJ in the next election thanks to new party Chairman Hatoyama's Asia-centred politico-economic vision for future Japanese foreign policy. America has for too long ignored popular sentiment against it in Japan and it may just be this groundswell that sees a change in government, with greater democracy and self-determination as its consequence - and no credit for either given to the land of Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney (which will surely tighten the military thumb-screws in response). ]
