TOKYO: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s most influential aide yesterday rejected criticism from China that Japan is lurching toward militarism and said Tokyo would keep seeking dialogue with both Beijing and Seoul, ties with which have been badly strained by rows over territory and wartime history.
Sino-Japanese ties, long plagued by China’s bitter memories of Tokyo’s wartime aggression, have worsened since a feud over disputed East China Sea islands flared in 2012. Relations with South Korea are also badly frayed by a separate territorial row and the legacy of Japan’s 1910-1945 colonisation.
“For the 69 years since the end of World War Two, we have built the present-day Japan based on the notions of freedom, democracy and peace,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, said in an interview.
“They say that Japan is a military power but (the defence budget increase in the year to March) was just 0.8 percent, while China has kept increasing its defence budget by more than 10 percent annually for 20 years,” Suga said. “To be called ‘militarist’ by such a country is completely off the mark.”
China’s announcement late last year of a new air defence identification zone, including the skies over the disputed isles, increased tensions with Beijing, while Abe’s December visit to a controversial shrine for war dead seen by critics as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism further marred Tokyo’s ties with its two Asian neighbours.
Japan’s close ally the United States has made clear it is keen to see a dialing down of tensions in the region. US Secretary of State John Kerry, in Asia ahead of President Barack Obama’s April visit to the region, on Thursday urged Tokyo and Seoul to “put history behind them” and calm tensions in the face of the threat from a volatile North Korea.
Looming large among the issues fraying Japan’s relations with South Korea is the question of compensation and an apology to so-called “comfort women,” as the women who were forced to work in Japanese wartime military brothels are euphemistically known. Many of those women were Korean.
Suga reiterated Japan’s stance that the matter of compensation was settled in the framework of a 1965 treaty establishing diplomatic ties. In 1993 Japan’s then-government spokesman, Yohei Kono, issued a statement apologising for the involvement of Japan’s military in the brothels.
In 1995, Japan set up a fund to make payments to the women from private contributions, but South Korea says that was not official and so not enough.
Japanese media have speculated about a possible summit between Abe and South Korean President Park Geun-hye during a international nuclear security summit at The Hague next month, but Suga declined to comment on the prospects.
“China and South Korea are neighbouring countries, so the door to dialogue is always open, and while stressing what we must stress, we want to deal with both countries calmly and from a broad perspective,” he said. Reuters
