A US Strategic Command document declassified a few years ago contains the following passage:
 
"While it is crucial to explicitly define and communicate the acts or damage that we would find unacceptable, we should not be too specific about our responses.  Because of the value that comes from the ambiguity of what the US might do to an adversary if the acts we seek to deter are carried out, it hurts to portray ourselves as too fully rational and cool - headed. The fact that some elements may appear to be potentially "out of control" can be beneficial to creating and reinforcing fears and doubts within the minds of an adversary's decision makers.  This essential sense of fear is the working force of deterrence.  That the US may become irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are attacked should be a part of the national persona we project to all adversaries."
 
Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger called this the Madman Strategy.  For nuclear weapons to serve as a deterrent, it's not enough simply to possess them.  The problem is, it's difficult to believe that a person of ordinary human feeling or rationality would actually use them.  A first strike would be a moral abomination, and would also mean abandoning the policy of deterrence; a second strike would mean that deterrence had failed, so that its only motive would be vengeance.  For nuclear weapons to be an effective deterrent, it's best for a government to persuade adversaries that its leaders are crazy enough to use them - as the document says, "out of control", "irrational and vindictive".  

C. Douglas Lummis, a former US Marine stationed on Okinawa and a present resident of Okinawa, is the author of Radical Democracy and other books in Japanese and English. A Japan Focus associate, he formerly taught at Tsuda College.

It is widely assumed that the Japan-U.S. military alliance plays a key role in securing peace in Northeast Asia. It not only shores up procedural democracy in Japan and South Korea but also assures Japan's neighbors, China in particular, of Japan's commitment to pacifism. Close analysis of the current stage of neonationalism and neoliberal austerity economics in Japan, as exemplified by the government that recently took over in Tokyo, conveys a different impression.

Following the December 19, 2012, general election to the powerful House of Representatives, the first since the Great East Japan Earthquake and the nuclear catastrophe at TEPCO's Fukushima complex, Abe Shinzo won a solid victory, restoring to power the LDP and its coalition partner, New Komeito.

With Japan mired in its fourth recession since 2000, the Democratic Party of Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko, having lost public and media support, was dismissed ignominiously for having failed to deliver Japan from protracted economic stagnation. Even if Noda had exercised effective leadership in the wake of the March 2011 earthquake-tsunami-nuclear reactor meltdowns, which he did not; or if, during the tenures of three DPJ prime ministers--Hatoyama Yukio, Kan Naoto, and Noda himself--the DPJ had effectively exposed the LDP's long record of misrule and corruption, the result might not have been any different.

The 2012 election thus revealed growing divides in Japanese society along lines of income, age, and educational level. Concurrently, it signaled a determination on the part of the LDP to more vigorously pursue anti-populist, neoliberal policies even though they have contributed directly to voter disaffection, as well as growing poverty and insecurity.   

Herbert Bix, author of Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, which won the Pulitzer Prize, is Professor Emeritus of History and Sociology at Binghamton University. A Japan Focus associate, he writes on issues of war and empire.

Recommended Citation: Herbert Bix, "Japan Under Neonationalist, Neoliberal Rule: Moving Toward an Abyss?" The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 11, Issue 15, No. 2, April 15, 2013.

Tomoko Akami teaches and researches at the School of Culture, History and Language and the Research School of Asia and the Pacific at the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. Her work on news agencies in Japan's foreign policy after 1934 is forthcoming: Soft Power of Japan's Total War State: The Board of Information and the National New Agency, 1934-45 (Dordrecht: Letters of Republic). Other publications include Internationalizing the Pacific: The United States, Japan and the Institute of Pacific Relations in War and Peace, 1919-45 (London: Routledge, 2002).

Recommended Citation: Tomoko Akami, "When Democracy is Not Enough: Japan's information policy and mass politics in diplomatic and economic crisis in the 1930s," The Asia-Pacific Journal, Volume 11, Issue 15, No. 1, April 15, 2013.