Okinawa: A Unique Joint US-Japanese
Colony
To the Courts! To the Streets!
Onaga vs. Abe
The confrontation pits
the Prime Minister and Cabinet of Japan against the Governor and people of
Okinawa. Since assuming office (for his second term) in December 2012, Abe has
pursued a radical agenda, not only oriented towards enforcing his will over
Okinawa but towards transforming the national polity: reinterpreting the
constitution, committing Japan to global military support for the US, and
joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Yet for none of these things did he have
a mandate, and it is salutary to remember that the political dominance (holding
61.3 per cent of seats in the lower house) that allows Abe such concentration of
power rests on an electoral victory in December 2012 in which his coalition
secured just 33.4 per cent of the votes in the proportional system. That is,
since only 52.4 per cent of people voted, Abe’s team gained the support of just
17.4 per cent of eligible voters.
Within Okinawa the
margin of opposition to the base project stands in successive surveys at above
70 per cent, on occasion even as high as 80, while even nationwide he faces
growing opposition, i.e., support for the Okinawan stance.2 “All
Okinawa” is one of the most recent, representative, and determined of the civic
organizations challenging the Abe agenda.
When Abe Shinzo at the
end of 2012 formed government for the second time (following his 2006-2007
administration), virtually the entire prefecture, including the Governor and the
Okinawan branch of his own party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), opposed
the Henoko project. He therefore concentrated on weakening, dividing and
neutralizing that opposition. In 2013, he achieved his first success by
persuading two prominent Okinawan LDP politicians to reverse themselves and drop
their opposition to the Henoko base in April, and in December they were followed
by the Okinawa chapter of the LDP itself and eventually by the Governor. The
first defector, Shimajiri Aiko played a key role in leading and helping
orchestrate the shift and was rewarded by being made parliamentary secretary to
the cabinet (naikaku seimukan) and later (October 2015) given a seat in
the third Abe cabinet. Her task was plain: to steer Okinawa’s polity and society
from resistance to compliance, as she had helped do earlier with the
LDP.
In July 2014, relying
as warrant on the formal consent to reclamation/construction extracted from
Governor Nakaima in December 2013, the Abe government began preparatory works on
Oura Bay. By late 2015 it was moving towards the actual reclamation – readying
to scour the coastal hills and beaches of much of Western Japan to provide two
and a half million tons of soil and sand to dump into it.
Having taken office as
Governor in December 2014 committed to “do everything in my power” to stop the
Henoko construction project,
Onaga Takeshi became
the figurehead of Okinawan resistance. Once in office, Onaga referred the
Nakaima decision process to a Third Party (Experts) Committee of
environmentalists and lawyers. When they in due course concluded from their
meticulous examination that the process had indeed been marked by fundamental
flaws, Onaga on October 13 formally cancelled the reclamation license. The
national government, its warrant for works removed, temporarily suspended them,
but it was determined to evade and negate the governor’s ruling. The Minister
for Lands and Infrastructure (Ishii Keiichi) issued an order cancelling the
Governor’s order on grounds that otherwise it would be “impossible to continue
the relocation” and because in that event “the US-Japan alliance would be
adversely affected.” 3 He proceeded to issue first an “advice,” and
then, three days later, an “instruction” to Governor Onaga to withdraw the
cancellation order. Onaga summarily rejected both.
On October 27, the Abe
cabinet met and decided to step up its pressure. It declared (through the
Minister for Defense) that there had been no “flaw” in the license Nakaima had
granted, suspended ongoing (if mostly in effect stalled) negotiations with the
prefecture, launched judicial proceedings in the Naha branch of the Fukuoka High
Court to compel the prefecture’s compliance, and ordered the resumption of works
at the site. It also ordered an additional 100-plus riot police from Tokyo
(units with names such as “Demon” and “Hurricane”), to reinforce the mostly
local Okinawan forces who till then had been imposing the state’s will at the
construction site. Overall, it amounted to a constitutional coup: stripping the
Governor and prefectural government of powers vested in them by the constitution
and the Local Government Act.
Okinawa for its part
refused the direction to withdraw the cancellation order, prepared to launch a
vigorous judicial defense, and launched a formal complaint under the little-used
“Council for Resolving Disputes between Central Government and Local
Governments”4
That same late-October
session of cabinet also decided to abandon the plan to shift some units of
Marine Corps MV 22 “Osprey” VTOL aircraft training to facilities in Saga
prefecture (i.e. in Kyushu, mainland Japan), since local municipal and
prefectural authorities there were resolutely opposed. In other words, local
opposition was respected in the case of Saga, but over-ruled in the case of
Okinawa. Throughout Okinawa, this was seen as decisive evidence of the national
government’s discrimination against it.
Information
Both the Abe state and
the Onaga prefecture strive to represent their case in terms of a “story” that
would be persuasive in Okinawa itself, Japan, and in international fora. While
Abe and his ministers insist that there is no alternative to the Henoko project,
that it amounts to a “burden reduction” for Okinawa, and that the project has
now entered the irreversible phase of “main works” (hontai koji),
Governor Onaga presents the totally different story of an inequitable and
increasing burden, building upon the initial illegal seizure of Okinawan land
and in defiance of the clearly and often expressed wishes of the Okinawan
people; of a struggle for justice and democracy and for the protection of Oura
Bay’s extraordinary natural biodiversity, worthy, as the prefecture saw it, of
World Heritage ranking. Increasingly, Okinawa carries that message to
international fora, including the the Governor’s mission to the US in May and
the UN (Human Rights Committee) in Geneva in September 2015. The All Okinawa
mission of November 2015 is part of that process.
The visit to Okinawa by
the Greenpeace vessel, Rainbow Warrior in early November 2015 was another
expression of this gradual internationalizing of the dispute. Though Greenpeace
had several times in the past (2000 and 2005) visited Okinawa, including Oura
Bay, this time the vessel was allowed to dock only in in Naha and Nago harbours,
its crew forbidden even to go ashore at Naha for four days, and refused
permission to visit Oura Bay. It signified the Abe government’s determination to
contain the Okinawa story and stop it from gaining wider international
publicity.
Another measure of the
Abe government’s intent to control the “Okinawa story” is the view, several
times articulated, by Abe’s close friend, the novelist Hyakuta Naoki, that the
two Okinawan newspapers (Ryukyu shimpo and Okinawa Times) should
be closed down because they express “traitorous” views. Hyakuta is an Abe
appointee (2013) to the board of governors of Japan’s public broadcasting
corporation, NHK. Though such views amounted to “hate speech,” they attracted
little attention in mainland Japan.5
The Abe government
steadily strives to sway local Okinawan opinion, finding and encouraging
supporters for the government’s design and countering elected officials who
oppose it. In the cabinet reshuffle of October 2015, Shimajiri Aiko, the
original “turncoat” of 2013 was promoted to cabinet as Minister for Okinawa,
with responsibilities that included also the Northern Territories, science and
technology, space, oceans, territorial problems, IT, and “cool Japan.” She was
much appreciated in Abe circles, not only for her role in 2013 but for the views
she expressed in 2014-5: calling for the Riot Police and Coastguard to be
mobilized to curb the “illegal, obstructionist activities” of the anti-base
movement (February 2014), denouncing Nago mayor Inamine for “abusing his power
(April 2015), and referring contemptuously to the “irresponsible citizens’
movement” (October 2015). As Okinawa minister, she could be expected to use her
considerable powers of patronage and influence to try to sway Okinawan society
towards submission to the Abe design.
Since Nago City had
from 2010 twice returned a mayor and local assembly majority that resisted all
attempts at suasion, and refused to accept any monies linked to it, Abe,
Shimajiri, and other members of government paid close attention to trying to
divide and weaken the city’s anti-base movement. Late in October, the heads of
three of the city’s 55 sub-districts (ku) – Henoko, Kushi and Toyohara
(population respectively 2014, 621, and 427) – were invited to the Prime
Minister’s office in Tokyo. They set out their wish-list, asking for repairs to
the local community halls, purchase of lawnmowers, and provision of one (or
perhaps several) “azumaya” (a kind of summer-house or gazebo).6 They
were told they were to be allocated the sum of 13 million yen each in the 2016
budget, a subsidy that would bypass the representative institutions of the city
and prefecture. It was to be (as Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga later put it),
“compensation” for the noise and nuisance caused them by the protest
movement.
It was a trifling
enough sum (less than half a million dollars in all), but it was without
precedent, it defied the principles of parliamentary sovereignty and local
self-government, and was a most likely illegal attempt to evade democratic will
and constitutional procedure. 7 Public funds were appropriated, with
no accountability, to encourage a cooperative, base-tolerating spirit in a few
corners of a stubbornly anti-base city.8
The ku in rural
Japan and Okinawa are the very smallest administrative units, commonly based on
traditional and family networks. No head of a ku had ever been invited to
the Prime Minister’s residence, seated at the table with top state officials
like a head of state, and offered direct subsidy from state
coffer
.
The extraordinary
appropriation for the three districts was in the same vein as the LDP
Secretary-General’s 50 billion yen offer of funds for Nago City’s development on
the eve of the crucial mayoral election of January 2014 (decisively rejected by
the city which returned instead its anti-base incumbent). Citizens of Nago are
familiar with such crude interventions, and might even take heart from this most
recent one because there was something pitiful about the spectacle of the
national government hosting local bigwigs and trying to seduce them with
lawn-mowers to its base construction cause. It was, as Ryukyu shimpo put
it, an “unprecedented politics of division”10.
However, although such
extraordinary, unaccountable disbursements (almost certainly illegal and
probably unconstitutional) were intended to show how cooperativeness would be
rewarded, Shimajiri’s position late in 2015 was fragile. A civic ombudsman
organization launched a criminal complaint against her alleging breaches of the
Public Election Law and the Political Funds Regulation Law,11
precisely the offences for which two female ministers of the Abe cabinet had
been forced to resign in September 2014.
Law
In a democratic polity,
when different units of the polity are in dispute, resort to the law would
normally be seen as the necessary path to resolution. But as the Henoko problem
is referred to the judiciary, there is a question as to whether Japan,
especially Abe’s Japan, enjoys the division of powers and independence of the
judiciary that are the hallmark of modern, constitutional states. As the Abe
government in July 2014 had effectively amended the constitution by the simple
device of adopting a new interpretation, so in 2015 it showed scant respect for
the relevant laws in the way it addressed Henoko reclamation. On the one hand it
pretended for purposes of its dispute with Okinawa to be just like a “private
person” (ichishijin) seeking redress under the Administrative Appeals Law
(a law specifically designed to allow aggrieved citizens to seek redress from a
recalcitrant state, whose function he was thus reversing), while on the other it
deployed the full powers and prerogatives of the state under the Local
Self-Government Law to sweep aside prefectural self-government and to assume the
right to proxy execution of an administrative act (gyosei daishikko). As
constitutional lawyers had, overwhelmingly, condemned the 2014 de facto
revision of the constitution, so in 2015 they criticized as manipulation or
breach of several laws the way the Abe government was proceeding in the dispute
with Okinawa prefecture.12 In Okinawa such proceedings are seen as a
mockery of any claim to fairness and
objectivity.”13
The legal procedures,
still at a relatively early stage, will play out in months ahead. However, the
grim reality facing Okinawans is that the courts have, since the Sunagawa case
of 1959, abandoned their theoretical, constitutional prerogatives to adjudicate
on contests involving state rights on the grounds that “matters pertaining to
the security treaty with the United States are “highly political” and concern
Japan’s very existence.14 This means that in effect the security
treaty is elevated above the constitution and immune from challenge at law. As
former [1990-1998] Governor Ota Masahide, remarked,
“Despite the principle
of separation of powers, the judiciary in Japan tends to subordinate itself to
the administrative branch … I think it will be very difficult for the
prefectural government to win the suit.” 15
Ota had himself been
the target of heavy Tokyo pressure when in 1995 he refused to sign the proxy
lease-agreement documents to allow the continued confiscation of private
Okinawan land for base purposes. Arraigned before the High Court, he was issued
in August 1996 with a peremptory order to obey. The fact that he then submitted
makes this a worrying precedent for those who would place their faith in his
successor.
In the meantime,
however, there are many legal options open to
Okinawa and to Governor Onaga to delay and obstruct the government. The
law had never envisaged the carrying out of a massive project in the teeth of
local non-cooperation. The Governor of Okinawa and mayor of Nago City could, and
undoubtedly would, block and delay each stage of the process. The Okinawan
Prefectural Assembly in 2015 adopted a law empowering the prefecture to inspect
soil or sand being imported from outside the prefecture (and at least in
principle to forbid its entry) because of the fear that pathogens imported from
elsewhere (including Argentine ants) could wreak devastating effects on the
island’s environment.16 The Okinawan protest movement on this front
was gradually stirring a response in the many districts throughout Western Japan
targeted for the provision of sand and soil for the base project; in other
words, opposition was spreading at the “supply” end as well as at the Okinawan
reclamation site. Henoko was also found to be the location of important “natural
monuments” such as hermit crabs, and of historically important “cultural relics”
dating back to the pre-modern Ryukyu era such as “anchor stones.” Even as Abe
readied his heavy machinery to step up the assault on the Bay, the discovery of
17 culturally significant earthen and stone-ware objects in the Oura Bay site
vicinity was announced. It was thought almost certain to lead to legal measures
to protect and further investigate the site.17
Physical Confrontation
The Abe government is
different from previous LDP governments in the violence with which it treats the
resolutely non-violent protest encampment at the Camp Schwab gate that opens to
the Henoko construction site. The earlier design of a Henoko offshore base had
been abandoned in 2005 because, as then Prime Minister Koizumi put it, of “a lot
of opposition”18 and, as was later learned, because the Coastguard
was reluctant to be involved in enforcing the removal of protesters from the
site for fear of bloodshed.19 No such inhibitions appeared to affect
Prime Minister Abe and his government in 2015.
|
Designated Land-fill Sources and Routes of
Transport to Henoko/Oura Bay (Map showing, from
top, Setouchi, Moji, Amakusa, Goto, Amakusa, Satamisaki, Amami oshima,
Tokunoshima, with Henoko at far bottom left.)
|
Despite being
relatively remote and difficult of access, especially in the early mornings,
Henoko attracts steadily growing numbers of participants, exceeding 1,000 for
the first time on the 500th day of the sit-in, November 18, 2015.
While the citizenry remains committed to non-violence and to the exercise of the
right of civil disobedience only after exhausting all legal and constitutional
steps to oppose the base project, the National Coastguard and Riot Police appear
to be flaunting their violence more and more openly, dragging away protesters
(quite a few of whom are in their 70s and 80s), dunking canoeists in the sea,
pinning down one protest ship captain till he lost consciousness, and on a
number of occasions causing injuries to protesters requiring hospital
treatment.20 The daily scenes from the Henoko site are shown on local
television and in the two prefectural newspapers (i.e. the media that in Abe
circles is seen as deserving to be shut down).
If the Abe government
design had been to induce submission by the exercise of overwhelming force at
the works site, and by wielding its authority in the judicial arena and
executive arenas, it has not worked. If anything, it is counter-productive.
Okinawan anger deepens. If the ongoing “Battle of Henoko” were to continue
indefinitely on its current lines for the five years that the government reckons
reclamation and construction would take, “unforeseen” events, with the real
possibility of bloodshed, become more likely. In the supposed pursuance of
“security,” insecurity spreads. The riot police reinforcements sent from Tokyo
at the beginning of November 2015 were no doubt chosen in part because they
could be expected to remain insensitive to this Okinawan pain and
anger.21
Martin Niemoller
(1892-1984), in his lament over the German people’s failure to contest the rise
of Nazism till too late, wrote “First they came for the Communists” after which
“they” came for the Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, etc, but it did not concern “me”
till it was too late. In today’s Japan, “they” is the Abe regime and “they” have
come now for the Okinawans. If democracy is to survive, the Japanese people as a
whole will have to realize that, like the sometime Germans, they today are “all
Okinawans.” It is not just the fate of Oura Bay but the principles of a
law-based constitutional state, committed t truth, justice, and democracy, that
are under threat in Okinawa and must be defended there lest they be swept aside
in Tokyo, Osaka and throughout Japan.
Gavan
McCormack is
an honorary professor of Australian National University, editor of the
Asia-Pacific Journal, and author of many texts on aspects of modern and
contemporary East Asian History, including Resistant Islands: Okinawa Confronts
Japan and the United States, Boulder: Rowman and Littlefield, 2012 (co-authored
with Satoko Oka Norimatsu). His work is commonly published in Japanese, Korean
and Chinese, as well as English. For some of his recent essays, “Okinawa as
sacrificial victim,” Le Monde Diplomatique, October 2015, pp. 6-7, and
“Chauvinist nationalism in Japan’s schizophrenic state,” in Leo Panitch and Greg
Albo, eds, The Politics of the Right, Socialist Register 2016, London, The
Merlin Press, 2015, pp.
231-249.
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