ON SUNDAY 90,000 residents rallied on the Japanese island of Okinawa over an issue that has become one of the thorniest of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s seven-month administration and a source of real tension with the US. The protesters reflect a two-decade growing resentment of the US military presence on the island, insisting the government must scrap a controversial 2006 agreement with the US to move the massive Futenma Marine Corps Air Station which they want closed. Mr Hatoyama had promised in last year’s election to move the base off the island, but since then has been talking about an unspecified plan that would reduce and move the heavy US presence elsewhere on the island, home to nearly half of its 44,000 servicemen in Japan.
The dispute, which has soured the relationship between the prime minister and President Obama, reflects underlying tensions over what is being seen in Japan as an anachronistic relationship between the two countries enshrined in the 50-year-old United States Japan Treaty. The latter reflects the post-war bargain between occupied and occupier that would see a demilitarised Japan focus on internal reconstruction and the US – with, at one time, a quarter of a million troops and 2,800 bases – as its security guarantor. Japan would be for the US, as former prime minister Yasuhiro Nakasone put it, “an unsinkable aircraft carrier”.
Unlike its willingness to accede to local pressure in Germany, South Korea and the Philippines to reduce its military presence, Washington has to date been reluctant to do likewise in Japan below current levels, and expects Tokyo to uphold the spirit of the treaty.
A combination of elements has fanned the flames: the adverse local impact of the huge troop presence – anger at the rape of a 12-year-old by three US servicemen in 1995 eventually led to the 2006 as-yet-unimplemented deal to move the base; anger at the cost of “host nation support” – Japan’s contribution of some $3-4 billion a year; and the growing awareness of still-denied secret agreements with the US to allow its ships with nuclear weapons use Japanese ports.
There have been calls for Mr Hatoyama’s resignation from within his own party as well as threats from coalition partners, the Social Democrats, to bring down the government unless he fulfils election promises. Languishing below 30 per cent in the polls, the issue is political dynamite, with no easy way out and a looming end of May deadline. For Japan it is also a defining moment.