Shinzo Abe uses hostage crisis to nudge Japan from pacifism

One of Japan's biggest tabloids ran an eye-popping headline this week: Islamic State (IS) will attack the country on February 18th, four days before the Tokyo Marathon, said the Nikkan Gendai. Japan's mass-market weekly magazines also speculate that it is only a matter of time before radical jihad comes calling.

Experts scoff at the tabloid’s prediction. But such stories are a sign that Japan for the first time feels vulnerable to the political violence that has afflicted the US and Europe. “The threat of terrorism has become more realistic for our country,” warned the government’s top spokesman, Yoshide Suga, this week.

The debate on who is to blame for this stark new reality has begun in earnest. While the country was riveted by the 12-day hostage crisis in the Middle East and its horrific denouement with the beheading of two Japanese citizens, criticism of the government was muted. That period has ended.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's handling of the crisis, and even his possible role in triggering it, are being questioned. Despite being aware that IS was holding the two hostages, Abe pledged $200 million in non-military aid to reduce the jihadi menace during a tour of the Middle East. Possibly misunderstanding the nature of that aid, IS issued its threat to execute Kenji Goto and Haruna Yukawa a few days later.

Long-standing isolationism

The key question for Abe is how this criticism affects his attempt to nudge Japan out of its long-standing isolationism. The prime minister wants Japan to scrap its 70-year-old pacifist stance and play a more muscular global role alongside its American ally. Gruesome pictures of beheaded Japanese citizens show there is a price to pay for this ambition, say analysts.

“My sense is that public opinion will remain strongly against Japan getting too entangled in foreign policy issues beyond its present ability,” says Nancy Snow, a foreign policy expert based at Tokyo’s Keio University. But she says the government will use the hostage crisis to demand a more aggressive and assertive foreign policy.

That strategy has become clear in the days since Goto’s murder. Government ministers have taken to the airwaves to argue the case for a stronger military. Abe floated the idea this week of allowing Japan’s Self-Defence Forces (SDF) to help rescue Japanese nationals abroad.

Until last summer, Japan’s war-renouncing constitution strictly limited overseas military engagements. But the government argued for and won a controversial “re-interpretation” that allows the SDF to come to the aid of a foreign military ally. Abe said on Tuesday the constitution still makes it “difficult” to protect the lives of Japanese citizens in what he called “a changing security environment”. He is likely to demand this spring the SDF role be expanded.

More than 1.5 million Japanese citizens live abroad, including thousands of diplomats, volunteers and workers in the Middle East – the source of the bulk of the nation’s petroleum. “We will consider the possibility of using arms to eliminate danger and to rescue” these individuals and others, Abe told a parliamentary committee this week.

Such talk is cheap. Japan has one of the world’s most sophisticated militaries but nothing resembling the sort of commando units capable of mounting a rescue mission – even if such a mission could succeed. But it shows Abe has become confident at voicing the tough rhetoric once unthinkable for a Japanese leader. In particular, analysts cite the prime minister’s retaliatory language in the days since Goto’s execution as a turning point in the nation’s foreign policy. Abe said his country would never forget the murder of its two citizens and vowed to make IS “pay the price”.

Japan once trod more carefully in the Middle East. In the 1970s and 1980s, it quietly pursued a diplomatic strategy that allowed it to keep oil flowing while keeping the US and Israel onside. It didn’t take part in the multinational coalition that attacked Iraq in the first Gulf War and famously wrote Washington a $13.5 billion cheque to pay for the cost instead. But the days when Japan could outsource its wars are gone, say Abe’s supporters.

Threat of terrorism

This does not mean an offensive role, at least for now, insist those closest to the prime minister. “Japan is not going to give any military aid to the region,” says Tomohiko Taniguchi, an adviser to Abe’s cabinet. But most analysts say Japan is heading in that direction.

“No country can escape from the threat of terrorism,” said Abe this week. The fact is though that, apart from its home grown version, Japan has avoided jihadi terrorism – until now.