日中関係－エグゼクティブ・カウンシルでの講演 2006年10月24日在ヒューストン日本国総領事 加茂佳彦
Good afternoon. I am very pleased to be here. Mr. Hoyt has helped me a great deal by providing you all with excellent preparatory material for my comments today concerning relations between Japan and China.I very much appreciate his efforts and your organization’s interest in my country.
In order to protect my diplomatic position, Mr. Hoyt has kindly requested that at the end of my comments today you refrain from asking me any diplomatically sensitive questions, but this is not necessary.Please do not hesitate to ask me whatever questions you may have.I am prepared to give my personal views, which of course do not represent the official views of the Japanese government.
There are three main topics concerning relations between Japan and China that I will make the focus of my remarks today.However, please keep in mind that in order to be as succinct as possible, it will be difficult for me to avoid making some oversimplifications while discussing some complicated issues, and for that I apologize.
(Prime Minister Abe’s visit to China)
The relationship between Japan and China has not been a congenial one for the past five years.During these years China’s leaders refused to meet with former Prime Minister Koizumi, citing his visits to the Yasukuni Shrine as the reason.The Chinese government made it clear that unless Japan’s Prime Minister vowed to never again visit the shrine, the Chinese president would not participate in summit level dialogue with him.This was the official stance of the Chinese government.
Before he became Prime Minister, Abe was known to have visited the Yasukuni shrine even more regularly than Koizumi.However, on becoming Prime Minister, Abe became ambiguous in regard to his stance on making visits to the shrine.He simply refused to discuss the issue.He neither gave his word to the Chinese nor refused to give it, and the Chinese accepted this.They dropped their earlier demands that the Japanese Prime Minister make a clear vow to never visit the shrine.Instead, they responded to Abe’s ambiguity with calm acceptance.In that sense, the Chinese compromised.Why? This is an important question.
At least in part, it is because the Chinese see Japan’s re-emergence as an economic power, and as a result, the need to reevaluate their position towards Japan.China recognizes that Japan’s economic power is of value to them, and that therefore they can no longer continue their antagonistic stance towards Japan.Of course, this is an oversimplification.Other factors, including their internal politics, have also influenced the change in China’s attitude, but Japan’s re-emergence has definitely been one of the most important factors.
The 1990’s was an era of transition in many ways.We witnessed a revolution in IT and increasing globalization. The Soviet Union fell, and America became the sole superpower, and we also witnessed the rise of China along with the perceived decline of Japan.It was Japan’s economic decline and quagmire during the ‘90’s that caused China to take a more aggressive diplomatic stance towards Japan.For example, they intensified their efforts throughout China to spread and nurture nationalistic anti-Japanese sentiment through education in schools and exhibits in war museums.They also sent their submarines into Japanese territorial waters, and in another instance of deliberate encroachment, they began exploration for natural gas in the disputed waters of the East China Sea.With Japan muddling through economic difficulties, China took full advantage of the opportunity to employ these aggressive tactics.
Mr. Koizumi took office as Prime Minister in 2001 and served for five years, and during that time, as I said, no top level bilateral dialogue took place between Japan and China.Diplomatic relations were at low ebb.However, private sector integration of the Japanese and Chinese economies strengthened during Koizumi’s era.Mr. Koizumi was considered by many to solely responsible for the weak political relations between Japan and China because of his visits to the Yasukuni Shrine.But this is a very superficial observation.It was, in fact, Mr. Koizumi who, by turning around the Japanese economy, to force China to reevaluate Japan as an economic power and thereby bring about their current more flexible diplomatic stance towards Mr. Abe.
(North Korea’s explosion of nuclear device)
North Korea recently detonated a nuclear device in underground testing.This action has many implications, but in my view, the most serious one is that it constitutes a very substantive challenge to the existing status quo in East Asia.All parties concerned in East Asia have an interest in maintaining the status quo.China is vested in maintaining the status quo because they want more time to grow big enough to compete with U.S., and at the same time, they also need the U.S.’s stabilizing influence in East Asia.South Korea would like to have an eventual reunification with North Korea, but at present, the North is so far behind in so many ways, that they are afraid of the burden that reunification will bring.So South Korea would also prefer to maintain the status quo.Japan prefers the status quo as well because instability is a threat to her national security.As the only superpower, the status quo is important to the U.S. as she does not want to be put in the difficult position of handling a volatile East Asia while at the same time engaging in the war on terror and the war in Iraq.At stake for Russia are oil prices.Energy resources bring money to the Russian government, so they don’t want any change in East Asia that might adversely affect them.
Each of these six-party members has interests which could be affected by North Korea’s nuclear testing.Even North Korea has an interest in not upsetting the status quo.Their leader, Kim Jong Il’s mission is to stay in power, and for him, that means maintaining the status quo.Of course in his view, nuclear testing is necessary for his political survival.
However, if North Korea acquires nuclear capability, it could seriously disturb the status quo. That is to say, as some have argued, Japan may be forced to arm itself with nuclear weapons, and that would be a fundamental change in the security situation in East Asia.It would be a radical departure from status quo, and I don’t think it will happen, but it is a major concern, and in particular, it is a major concern for the U.S.The East Asian status quo is supported by Japan’s non nuclear status quo, and Japan’s non nuclear status quo is supported by the U.S./Japan security arrangement.The U.S. provides a nuclear umbrella for Japan and has its bases in Japan.This arrangement has worked well for the past 50 years.If Japan went nuclear it would change the most fundamental aspect of the U.S./Japan security arrangement.
So, as you can see, North Korea’s nuclear testing has critical implications that affect the U.S.’s East Asia strategy, and the U.S. does not want their policy affected in this way.After North Korea’s recent nuclear test, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice quickly visited Japan, China, and South Korea and reaffirmed the U.S.’s commitment to provide Japan with the full range of protection for her defense.Japanese leaders along with Prime Minister Abe made it clear that Japan had no intention to go nuclear.
Despite the calls for a debate on the issue by some high ranking officials in Japan, the majority of Japanese people feel that Japan’s non nuclear policy is something to be proud of and not something that needs an urgent re-evaluation.
We Japanese are the only nation to have suffered the blasts of atomic bombs. However, this dreadful experience during Word War II did not elicit Japanese animosity towards Americans, but instead resulted in our strong abhorrence of nuclear weapons.We have committed ourselves to the NPT regime and have played a leading role in advocating for a comprehensive nuclear test ban.As a peace loving nation, it has been our tradition to campaign for nuclear disarmament.Given this atmosphere in Japan, and its consistent policies on nuclear issues in the past, I think it is inconceivable that by its own volition Japan will go nuclear.Only in extremely theoretical cases in which, for example, credible nuclear deterrence from the US. was absent, might Japan even begin to consider a major change in policy.
(History of exchange between Japan and China)
Japan and China share a long history.Chinese civilization and culture has long been an omnipotent force in East Asia.Its influence is enormous, and Japanese civilization also owes a lot to China’s.Our writing system was imported originally from China.Buddhism and Confucianism came to Japan through and from China.Having knowledge of Chinese poetry and philosophy has long been considered to be a prerequisite for becoming a member of Japan’s intelligentsia.It was also China who invented gun powder, paper, and the gyroscope.Japan also adapted China’s martial arts into our own form.
For 3,000 years, China has been the dominant central power wielding their enormous influence over the other countries of East Asia, and the Chinese are very proud of this.They believe that China should and always will be that power.However, the Sea of Japan has served as a buffer zone between China and Japan, and so we have remained surprisingly independent.Though we imported Chinese writing characters, we transformed them into our own, and our language was never overtaken by Chinese.So although Chinese culture became an integral part of our own, it never overtook our culture.For the majority of our history, we have not been politically subservient to China nor become one of their tributaries.
Over the 2000 years of our shared history there have been only a few relatively minor conflicts between China and Japan.This is an amazing fact for such a long period.No major battles were fought, only peripheral confrontations.In fact, although Japan gained quite a bit culturally from China, there was never any great level of interaction or contact between them.
China is a very proud country, so their decline as a world power during the past 150 years was very humiliating for them, and it is the Japanese who have borne the blame in large part for this humiliation.Yet, history tells us that it was Western encroachment that triggered China’s decline.Their history textbooks assign many pages to describing their struggle against Japan during the undeclared war that was fought between them in the 30’s and 40’s.However, they remain silent on the record of a peaceful and democratic Japan after World War II.
It would be helpful to the relations between our countries if the more positive aspects of our shared histories were taught in their schools.For example, during the end of 19th century to beginning of 20th century, it was Japanese intellectuals and financiers who supported the 1911 Chinese revolution.The Ch’ing dynasty was officially ended by this revolution led by Sun Yat-sen and other Chinese intellectuals who sometimes based their activities in Tokyo.Japanese intellectuals helped the revolution by supporting their activities, and Japan’s Meiji Restoration served as their revolutionary inspiration.With the Meiji Restoration, Japan had executed a successful transformation from a feudal society to a more modern one that could compete with Western powers.China tried to emulate Japan in this way by bringing in a new political system.
It is important to understand that China and Japan have managed for the most part to peacefully coexist for a very long time, and in part that is due to the fact that either China or Japan was always in a position of predominance over the other.Today, we are at the crossroads of our long relationship.For the first time in history, we are poised to witness the rivalry of two Asian powers sitting side by side in their neighborhood.My hope is that we will allow a new spirit of cooperation and the wisdom we have gained during our long history together as neighbors to guide us in writing a new and mutually beneficial chapter in our shared histories.
Thank you very much for your kind attention.